saw this article that was in the Providence journal...thought it was a good read. Sorry if it was already posted...
http://www.projo.com/sports/kevinmcnamara/sp_bkc_kmcol10_02-10-08_328V41M_v4.3635aba.htmlA quality St. John’s team is good for the Big East
The Big East needs St. John’s to be St. John’s again. College basketball needs St. John’s to be feared again. New York needs St. John’s to matter once again.
It wasn’t too long ago when the Red Storm truly mattered. Led by big-time city recruits Ron Artest and Erick Barkley, St. John’s was a Big East power and rolled all the way to the Elite Eight in the 1999 NCAAs. But the program has been on a downward spiral ever since. Jarvis stopped playing ball with the local AAU kingpins and the big-time New York prep stars started going elsewhere.
Getting St. John’s back on everyone’s radar has proven next to impossible. St. John’s turned to Norm Roberts, an unproven assistant coach at Kansas who grew up a jump shot from campus. He had to deal with some NCAA probation issues left over from Jarvis’ tenure and the results of his first three years were negligible. Now in his fourth season, Roberts is hearing calls for his head as he tries to win games in the Big East with a roster featuring eight freshmen.
Days like yesterday help a lot. With Looie Carnesecca sitting in his customary spot along the baseline and several stars of yesteryear in the house to celebrate the school’s 100th season of basketball, the Red Storm kids out-fought Providence’s veterans and grabbed a big win, 64-62. The win, the third in a row for SJU, moves the Red Storm a step closer to satisfying its main goal: a spot in the Big East Tournament.
That last statement should send shivers up the backs of New York basketball people. St. John’s is one of those programs that owned the Big East Tournament for the first 20 years of the league. Garden greats Chris Mullin, Mark Jackson and Walter Berry took the school to its greatest heights in the 1980s and good players like Felipe Lopez, Zendon Hamilton, Artest and Barkley kept the ball rolling even after Carnesecca retired in 1992.
But old, dreary Carnesecca Arena is all about memories right now. The Red Storm play most of their games in the 6,008-seat building now because they can’t draw flies when they play at the Garden. In two Garden games this season, SJU drew 5,200 fans for Pittsburgh and 9,942 for a 74-42 nightmare loss against Georgetown.
Roberts’ team isn’t drawing well on campus either. Yesterday’s crowd of 5,868 was the largest this season. The Storm averages 3,900 fans a game and hasn’t played before a sellout on campus in three seasons. Clearly, the team is no longer relevant in the city right now. The question is can they alter that course?
St. John’s opened an on-campus basketball practice facility that adjoins Carnesecca Arena and Roberts has some good young players, especially big man Justin Burrell. But St. John’s is clearly losing the game in a college sports world dominated by football money. As one SJU insider said yesterday, “they know how hard it is for Catholic schools to compete. That wasn’t an issue before.â€
Appreciating how hard it is to compete and doing something about it are different issues. Georgetown and Villanova aren’t having any problems, mainly because they have coaches in place who recruit like crazy. You’d think St. John’s would sell itself to New York City stars but that’s just not the case right now. It’s on Roberts and his staff to change that, but right now the city’s blue chippers aren’t looking at St. John’s.
Fran Fraschilla, a St. John’s coach who was fired in 1998, knows all about the Catholic school situation. He’s seen penny-pinching priests work their magic as an assistant at Providence and the head man at SJU. He’s also coached at New Mexico where the Lobos have budgetary free reign. He was recently quoted in a New York Post story about the issue.
“Having worked at a number of private and public institutions and now as an observer of college basketball, I think that there are some Catholic schools that really understand how to be successful and some that don’t," said Fraschilla, now an analyst for ESPN. "It seems it has taken St. John’s a long time to do the things it needs to do to be successful in the 21st century."
Only Roberts would know if St. John’s needs to do more to get back on track. If he’s the coach who gets that done, the Big East and college basketball will be better off for it.
kmcnamar@projo.com