Admittedly I haven't seen or even heard any of the last couple games and I only know we won yesterday and lost today. Reading the breakdown it sounds like we won yesterday because we had a rare good shooting day and we lost today because of Norm which obviously doesn't surprise me. I'm only a freshman but I've lived here and closely followed St. John's all my life and while I had hopes for Norm at the beginning, and was even willing to forgive him for not winning with what little he had to work with at first even though it was painfully obvious he is one of the ten worst game coaches in D1, the breaking point has passed. I was worried when everyone started transferring after every season ending with Q a month before the season leaving us with no one ready to have a shot at succeeding at the five spot. I finally knew we could never succeed when I was at a college basketball game and it wasn't even one of ours. I went to the Coaches vs. Cancer final this year like I try to every year. Between the consolation and championship games they announced a New York State High School All Star team mostly comprised of city players. There were between 25-30 of them. And, as we all know, not one of them is coming to SJU. It hurt losing Sylven the way I think we did and obviously that was something Norm didn't control imo. But to have the best players in the city lined up and all say they're going somewhere else really beat the point home...
We have good players this year, as much as I criticize his recruiting. I love the way DJ plays and I can see Burrell taking us places. I haven't seen RT yet but I really look forward to it at the Holiday Festival. But even with them we can't win, it's really ridiculous. If Georgetown beats us fine, same with Pitt (and after seeing Blair run all over Duke that's gonna be sad). But when we aren't even in the conference schedule yet this is downright pathetic. We've lost to the preseason cellar dweller in the ACC (who I know is now ranked but we'll see what happens to them when they begin the conference schedule; still, at least they took care of business now which is what we needed to do), and teams from the MAAC, MAC and now I think C-USA. We're the only major school in the center of the country and a hotbed of recruiting and we have none of the local guys and we lose to everybody. It's gotten to the point where the media doesn't point and laugh at us, they just don't talk about us. College sports have been completely forgotten by the general population of New York because of the way we've fallen like this.
I expect nothing from this team and I sadly haven't had a good reason to for a long time. The furthest I remember vividly was Lopez and Hamilton's teams. They had such great career scoring numbers and they played in exactly one tournament game which they lost to freaking Detroit in who knows what conference. Then we had two great teams (and I'm honestly still not over losing to Ohio State in 1999 lol it began my hatred of Ohio which continued the next season when at MSG we lost a game to OSU when we were up 10 with under a minute left, then the bugs they planted on Joba and the home run lay-up the other day) and we couldn't even make it to the Sweet 16 as a two seed...My greatest memory of St. John's basketball is watching Hatten beat Duke and then win the NIT essentially by himself and now none of that even counted lol.
I'll admit that I'm not always the best fan in the world. I can barely watch the Jets when they're this bad (which is every other year lol) and I even lost hope in the Yankees this spring. But I have never ever missed a SJU home game and even with the lack of coverage these were the first two road games I've missed completely in many years and if they weren't in Hawaii that wouldn't have happened. This is the one team that I can honestly say I've been with the whole way and I'd sit through anything, all this crap, to watch them win one day. But I'm 18 and rationally fearing that it might never happen. I walked two miles to get to the game vs. top 10 undefeated Boston College a couple years ago in a blizzard b/c the car was stuck in the snow and I sat in my old seats as the one SJU fan behind the opponent bench and took shit from Boston fans (who obviously I was already less than fond of as a Yankee and Jet fan) to watch Norm not start Daryl Hill for noo good reason and lose by a few points that we might have gotten from our only consistent scorer when BC came out flat. We lost and I walked through all the snow all the way home sad as hell and I was still glad I went to see us give it our best shot. I've found something to really root for in every player we've had since I can remember except maybe Grady Reynolds lol. I waited all last year to come sit in the Jungle and rush the court when we had a great win at the Garden (like when we beat Louisville and Pitt in a row one week in 06). I watched Hamilton get hurt in the last game against Providence last year and saw Calhoun step up and win the game for us with 21 and I thought to myself we might have something with him and Burrell next year.
I thought many days this summer about finally starting to win again and then there went Calhoun out of nowhere. I love watching Burrell and DJ pile up double doubles but I'm legitimately terrified I'll log on to the Jungle one day in September as we're somberly discussing their transfer. And that is why, not even the lack of high profile guys or getting outcoached every game and losing to Niagara or St. Francis on Louie's day, we need to get rid of Norm ASAP. I'll never stop rooting for this team. But we all see how outside of the Jungle there are no more then 20 fans really caring about what happens at any given game. We've lost essentially everything and it's time we rebuilt with someone new. Stop saying no to McKillop and hope he can bring in a few more gems like Curry. That kid has come damn close to beating some good schools on his own and with a supporting cast even like the one we have he wouldn't lose. McKillop stole him from under Duke and UNC's nose. There's no reason why he couldn't steal someone from NYC (which I should add since in the current landscape it's easily forgettable is our backyard) from under Pitt's nose. Not so long ago that would have been a ridiculous statement but now it's become a pathetic truth.
Go change it St. John's. The real fans won't leave and it's time we went out and made some new ones.