Ok sorry in advance for the long winded rant but here goes...
It's a shame that most of you are missing the point. It's the way this new regime is going about their business that's the most encouraging sign.
The ratings and stars debate is silly. St. John's has no right expecting a certain level of player to come here. This program is in no position to expect that based on the last 15 years of on court results.
The previous two regimes signed about a dozen four and five star recruits between them. What certain level of player should we not expect to come here?
What's nice to see is that within a few weeks of getting the job Anderson signs a tough, solid rated point guard with upside. He then puts out offers to a couple of 6'9 and 6'10 kids. Forget the ratings on these kids. It's nice to see him targeting point guards and big men right off the bat.
Yeah, he put out a couple of offers, that's nice to see. Because if he hadn't, that would have been troubling. Because without offers, there are no players. And he secured a tough solid 3 star rated guard with upside, like Brian Trimble. Check. And has made offers to 6'9 and 10 kids, like Owens and Brown and Steere and Roberts and Brooks. Check. That hasn't happened before. Certainly there's groundbreaking stuff going on here.
Look at the big picture. Under the past regime we were in the dark most of the time and most of the time when there was talk about signing this recruit or signing a coach (Mike Rice,etc) it almost never panned out. Adding insult to injury, under the last regime these rumors would linger for not days, not weeks, but MONTHS.
I've never seen a high major program live in secrecy the way they did the last 4 years with the rumor mill BS.
I don't labor under the delusion that any basketball program owes its fan base transparency. On the contrary, I think it owes respect to its players privacy and that strategically it should not broadcast its plans to its opponents. You know, in the same way that Eisenhower calling Hitler the week before D Day and telling him there was an imminent invasion might have been a strategic blunder. Speaking of blunders, here's yours: there are on these various fan boards many avatar shifting allegedly in the know drama queens and fordham graduates whose inner lives are so shallow that they feel the need to preen in obscure corners of the internet about what they sense they might have heard might be happening and there are a multitude of rubes like you who gobble it up via an internet version of telephone tag that turns those vague allusions into rumors into facts which then go wrong. Remember two years ago when fans spent the whole summer wondering whether Matt was off to LSU and this past summer when everyone was playing where
Waldo Mike Rice. That was not the past regime's fault. That was the fault of rumor mongering and slander. Personally I much prefer the past regime's stoicism to the previous regimes histrionics, where every minor and major life event became an excuse for public displays of wailing and gnashing of teeth complete with sack cloth and ashes.
I've never seen a high major program live in secrecy the way they did the last 4 years with the rumor mill BS.
This is utter nonsense. All high major basketball programs operate in secrecy. John Wooden seceretly had a bag man called Sam Gilbert. Rick Pitino secretly operated a brothel. Sean Miller and Will Wade et al secretly paid their players hundreds of thousands of dollars. Kevin Willard secretly negotiated a deal with Tiny Morton. None of that was broadcast. Only Johnny Clamchowder and ratface operate in public and only because they can.
The fact is that Chris Mullin barely spoke to the press: his contempt for it was palpable. He did not start or propagate rumors. He was in that sense very much like Bill Belichick and Bobby Knight, both of whom were comfortable in their skins and knew in their bones that journalists are idiots.
It got so old and the worst part was it didn't yield any positive results. Some may argue that this past year was a positive but next year was bound to be a disaster again and the old regime wasn't going to implement any sweeping change to avoid this from happening. They were just going to keep doing the same things that they did for 4 years that barely moved this program in the right direction. I'll give them a little credit because that is all they deserve, nothing more.
Mullin inherited a team comprising Felix Balamou and Amar Albigwitz and within four years won 20 games and made the NCAA tourament while compiling the most talented roster in recent memory: Ponds, Heron, Simon, Figueroa, etc. That might not be a positive result to you, but it's a positive result to any one other than a complete lunatic. Did he do with it all that might have been done? No. Is that "barely moved in the right direction"? No.
You can bash these kids that Anderson is going after all you want but at least give the guy a year to see what he's trying to build. Hell we gave CM like 3 years of total leash before putting the pressure on him this past season to produce a solid season.
I have not seen anyone bashing the single player Anderson has brought in, except to notice that he is small, unregarded and lightly recruited. All of which is true. Maybe he'll morph into Calvin Murphy; I certainly hope so. What I have seen is people bashing posters who have achieved huge throbbing erections based upon that single signing. Which, look the the mirror
Anderson is moving fast. Adding players, coaches and targeting recruits. So far to me he's bringing a level of experience and professionalism to this job that I haven't seen here in a very long time. I may be wrong but let's see how it plays out because I think he knows what he's doing.
So I should trust the process because you do. Okay. But then I have little choice.