Kennedy gives Roberts his go-to guy [SNY.tv]

http://web.sny.tv/news/article.jsp?ymd=20091214&content_id=7809070&oid=2&vkey=29 (by Brendon Desrochers)

It's Norm Roberts' sixth season in Jamaica, and his team is off to its best start yet -- 8-1 with quality wins over Temple and Siena and lone loss by nine at Duke, which is more impressive than last season's 9-1 start with only one quality win -- Cornell -- in the bunch. Roberts' teams have been marked by competent defense and inept offense, but with the emergence of an efficient go-to player, the Red Storm have a legitimate opportunity at an NCAA Tournament bid.

When Roberts brought in a large junior class three seasons ago, it was this set of players that figured to make or break his tenure. D.J. Kennedy and Justin Burrell were the two players who appeared most likely to become offensive standouts as freshmen in 2007-08. The team offense was simply wretched, but Kennedy managed to hit 48.5 percent of his 2-pointers and grab a decent share of offensive rebounds. Burrell was much more active in the offense, but his 43 percent 2-point percentage was not a fortuitous sign.

Last season, a new challenger emerged when Paris Horne became a major part of a marginally improved St. John's offense. Horne was mediocre on his many 3-pointers (33.5 percent on 182 attempts), but like Kennedy the year before, Horne flourised inside the arc, hitting 51.3 percent of his 2-pointers, a terrific figure for a 6-foot-3 guard. Kennedy saw his interior efficiency plummet (43.6 percent on 2's), but he replaced those misses with a lot of made free throws. Burrell hit a few more of his 2's (45.0 percent) but continued to struggle with turnovers, especially for a player not asked to handle the ball.

This season, with his team in need of a go-to scorer, Kennedy has been nothing short of phenomenal. He's been about 20-percent more active in the offense and still much more efficient at the same time. The key has been his ability to get to the line. He hits 79 percent of his free throws and gets fouled about six times per 40 minutes on the floor. Kennedy has also gotten his 2-point percentage back up -- to 61.4 percent -- and has even shown range from deep, knocking down threes at a 44.8-percent rate, this after making exactly one-third of his 3-point attempts in each of his first two seasons.

Read More

An aside: I wouldn't call St. John's last 2-3 teams "competent" on defense, mostly in Big East play.  They were a sieve inside, a real damned sieve, and any team with two competent forwards seemed to exploit that weakness.  I see a bit of it this year as well, and I'd feel a lot better if Nicholson from St. Bonaventure and Gaston from Fordham hadn't gone off on the Red Storm.

It's really depth that makes us better. Brownlie and Hardy aren't always strong, but they've chipped in enough to make a difference like we have not seen.

What I love about DJ this year, is that he going to the rack even more, and it doesn't seem like anyone can stop him.

I think the starting line up, should be DJ, and our 4 top defenders.

It's really depth that makes us better. Brownlie and Hardy aren't always strong, but they've chipped in enough to make a difference like we have not seen.

What I love about DJ this year, is that he going to the rack even more, and it doesn't seem like anyone can stop him.

I think the starting line up, should be DJ, and our 4 top defenders.

who would your four be. i think booth is overated defensivly. dj is one of our better defensive players. i would say the five best are horne dj burrell coker and probably omari. that lineup could work

Right now, DJ, Horne, Coker, Brownlie and I suppose Evans-but he needs to learn when to give up the ball. Too much fancy crap against Fordham.

After the Fordham game, I got to thinking that norm needs to come out with a different starting lineup for the 2nd half of games.  I know it has happened much this year, but we failed to score in the 1st four minutes of the Fordham game, and I think there have been stretches of our others games this year where we have failed to score.  If Sunday had been a BE game, we would have lost.  Because of our history of going scoreless, I would prefer for us to start the 2nd half strong with our most potent offensive team.  And I think that should include Hardy as the PG.  Boothe and Stith don’t give us any offense and I’m very afraid that come BE play, that will haunt us.  I would prefer to start the 2nd half offensively strong, and then slowly work in Boothe for his “defense.”

Quote from: Poison on December 15, 2009, 10:33:21 AM

It's really depth that makes us better. Brownlie and Hardy aren't always strong, but they've chipped in enough to make a difference like we have not seen.

What I love about DJ this year, is that he going to the rack even more, and it doesn't seem like anyone can stop him.

I think the starting line up, should be DJ, and our 4 top defenders.

who would your four be. i think booth is overated defensivly. dj is one of our better defensive players. i would say the five best are horne dj burrell coker and probably omari. that lineup could work

dj is no question the best we have at probably everything... but boothe is far from overrated defensively, in the fordham game he single handedly stoped around 4 run and gun attempts running down the ball... omari doesnt do that and he cant run a team like dj and boothe do