South Florida Game Discussion

Great win.  Kept out double digit lead and nice performance overall with sold out crowd.  Can't ask for more.  We held serve and didn't give up a must-win to a lesser team.  Now is where the fun starts.  No more gimme's...

just got home, crowd was vocal and louie was great at half. If USF could shoot at all it would have been a 5pt lead at the half. Their first half outside shooting was atrocious. The PG we all worried about was controlled for the most part and got in foul trouble taking him out for most of second half.

Btw, it was mentioned by Joe3 on the other board but it is rather blatant that the refs will ignore all kinds of fouls committed against DLo.  Some of them were so hard, with a ref standing right near the play and nothing was called.  I guess they don't like the tats, mohawk and body language.

Was thinking it would be nice if we could start a streak of not losing on campus under Lavin.   Teams we play at CA should be guaranteed Ws. 
I would really like to see us go a couple years without losing there.   

just got home, crowd was vocal and louie was great at half. If USF could shoot at all it would have been a 5pt lead at the half. Their first half outside shooting was atrocious. The PG we all worried about was controlled for the most part and got in foul trouble taking him out for most of second half.

If USF could shoot.  Or maybe we played good defense?

I love Harrison's game and think he is critical to the team's success. But he can also feign contact  with the best South American forwards in soccer. The refs are on to the dives and it may be working against him at this point. It has nothing to do with tats or the mohawk. 

I love Harrison's game and think he is critical to the team's success. But he can also feign contact  with the best South American forwards in soccer. The refs are on to the dives and it may be working against him at this point. It has nothing to do with tats or the mohawk. 

If so, hopefully refs catch up to Nova's Arcidiacono's act. He fakes contact constantly and gets the call most times. Good player, but annoying!

QUEENS, N.Y. (AP) -- Steve Lavin had been coaching a very young St. John's team a certain way for most of the season. It had been an approach of staying upbeat, making sure everything was a positive learning experience. He was treating a team full of 10 first- and second-year players like a team full of 10 first- and second-year players.

Things changed a bit Wednesday night in a 69-54 victory over USF.

"I wasn't pleased with stretches where we lost our focus and concentration," Lavin said of a second-half timeout he called when he could be heard over the home crowd, letting his team know he didn't like what he was seeing. "We lost the concentration we need to put good teams away. But we recaptured the focus and salted the win away. With our schedule stepping up we can't have those lapses or teams will go on runs and that will make it less likely that we will do something special in March."

“@STJ_Basketball: Red Storm Rises In Queens To Turn Away USF, 69-54: Recap, Stats, Notes, Quotes, Photos, Video: http://www.redstormsports.com/sports/m-baskbl/recaps/022013aaa.html #stjbb”

Quote from: loughlinguy on February 20, 2013, 11:16:44 PM

I love Harrison's game and think he is critical to the team's success. But he can also feign contact  with the best South American forwards in soccer. The refs are on to the dives and it may be working against him at this point. It has nothing to do with tats or the mohawk. 

If so, hopefully refs catch up to Nova's Arcidiacono's act. He fakes contact constantly and gets the call most times. Good player, but annoying!

Exactly.  Same deal

Entertaining evening. Good crowd, good game, fun to have all the legends and not so legendary former redmen in the house. Would like to play SF a few more times before the end of the season-can we get a schedule change? We have 2 legit scorers in Dlo and Karr and than we need contributions from everybody. I always like a team to have 3 scorers so you can always have 2 on the court at the same time because obviously with one the D will concentrate on stopping the one scorer and at short intervals both our scorers are on the bench making it really tough. Would love to ad a scorer for next year or we need to develop one currently on the roster-maybe Marco. sanchez could have been that guy for us and would have probably made the difference in 16-10 being 20-6 as the Rutgers, Nova, Ashville and Murray St. games could all easily have been wins. Maybe we are not so far off especially if we don't lose anyone and we add or develop a third scorer.

This game discussion is a ghost town. Everyone was at the game, right??

Yep.  It was all hands on deck out on Union turnpike.

Steve Lavin is a player’s coach, a master of one-liners and platitudes, a positive preacher who tells almost every player to take the shot if open.

But behind the scenes, when the need arises, he has been known to blister his players. For the first time this season, we saw that side of Lavin in a 69-54 win over South Florida last night in Carnesecca Arena.

With 10:44 left in the second half, the Johnnies had frittered away a chunk of a 22-point lead. Lavin had seen this immature act before. Five times this season the freshmen- and sophomore-laden Johnnies blew double-digit leads but regrouped in time to salvage wins.

Lavin chose to laud his pups after those performances, congratulating them for their resiliency. But the days of coddling are over.

The final two weeks of the season will determine if St. John’s (16-10 overall, 8-6 in the Big East) gets an NCAA Tournament berth. A loss to the lowly Bulls (10-16, 1-13), who lost their ninth straight, would have been unacceptable.

So Lavin let loose. It wasn’t Bob Knight, but it wasn’t Dean Smith either.

“There are times definitely when you’ve got to turn up the heat and put the fire under their fanny because that’s my job as a coach is to be a truth teller and present the appropriate sense of urgency for what’s at stake,’’ said Lavin.

“So that we don’t get to the spring and look back and say, ‘Well, we were too young. We were too immature. We didn’t realize the opportunity that we had and it slipped away, and now we get ready for next year.’ ’’

The opportunity is this: The Johnnies are two wins away from having an 85-percent chance of going to the Big Dance. A Big East team with 18 wins has been a part of the greatest three weeks in sports 161 out of 189 times since 1982-83 when the automatic bid came into being.

http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/college/basketball/it_ain_pretty_Wq5xuiBJCqy4h5kqbsqDPM Lenn Robbins

Quote from: valgoth on February 20, 2013, 10:56:28 PM

just got home, crowd was vocal and louie was great at half. If USF could shoot at all it would have been a 5pt lead at the half. Their first half outside shooting was atrocious. The PG we all worried about was controlled for the most part and got in foul trouble taking him out for most of second half.

If USF could shoot.  Or maybe we played good defense?

USF couldn't do anything well. That is one of the worst teams I've ever seen. Strangely enough also one of the biggest teams.

Quote from: Moose on February 20, 2013, 11:10:09 PM

Quote from: valgoth on February 20, 2013, 10:56:28 PM

just got home, crowd was vocal and louie was great at half. If USF could shoot at all it would have been a 5pt lead at the half. Their first half outside shooting was atrocious. The PG we all worried about was controlled for the most part and got in foul trouble taking him out for most of second half.

If USF could shoot.  Or maybe we played good defense?

USF couldn't do anything well. That is one of the worst teams I've ever seen. Strangely enough also one of the biggest teams.

I find it funny, ironic and probably a bunch of other adjectives that everyone clamors for a blowout win, but then when we in fact win a blowout, the other team was the worst team ever.  I don't believe in coincidence that much.

Quote from: Poison on February 21, 2013, 08:17:57 AM

Quote from: Moose on February 20, 2013, 11:10:09 PM

Quote from: valgoth on February 20, 2013, 10:56:28 PM

just got home, crowd was vocal and louie was great at half. If USF could shoot at all it would have been a 5pt lead at the half. Their first half outside shooting was atrocious. The PG we all worried about was controlled for the most part and got in foul trouble taking him out for most of second half.

If USF could shoot.  Or maybe we played good defense?

USF couldn't do anything well. That is one of the worst teams I've ever seen. Strangely enough also one of the biggest teams.

I find it funny, ironic and probably a bunch of other adjectives that everyone clamors for a blowout win, but then when we in fact win a blowout, the other team was the worst team ever.  I don't believe in coincidence that much.

Criticism is great, drinking Kool Aid all the time is not, but the need to be over the top negative and self loathing is sad.

Quote from: Poison on February 21, 2013, 08:17:57 AM

Quote from: Moose on February 20, 2013, 11:10:09 PM

Quote from: valgoth on February 20, 2013, 10:56:28 PM

just got home, crowd was vocal and louie was great at half. If USF could shoot at all it would have been a 5pt lead at the half. Their first half outside shooting was atrocious. The PG we all worried about was controlled for the most part and got in foul trouble taking him out for most of second half.

If USF could shoot.  Or maybe we played good defense?

USF couldn't do anything well. That is one of the worst teams I've ever seen. Strangely enough also one of the biggest teams.

I find it funny, ironic and probably a bunch of other adjectives that everyone clamors for a blowout win, but then when we in fact win a blowout, the other team was the worst team ever.  I don't believe in coincidence that much.

USF wasn't great, but they are not the worst team.  They did beat Georgetown this season.  We did what we were supposed to do against a team that wasn't as good as we are. 

I love Harrison's game and think he is critical to the team's success. But he can also feign contact  with the best South American forwards in soccer. The refs are on to the dives and it may be working against him at this point. It has nothing to do with tats or the mohawk. 

Exactly. He has a rep for faking several fouls a game.  He is so obvious about it after because  he smirks and winks to his teammates, the camera, and/or the bench.  Refs are always talking off the court and his name is certainly brought up often.

Quote from: Poison on February 21, 2013, 08:17:57 AM

Quote from: Moose on February 20, 2013, 11:10:09 PM

Quote from: valgoth on February 20, 2013, 10:56:28 PM

just got home, crowd was vocal and louie was great at half. If USF could shoot at all it would have been a 5pt lead at the half. Their first half outside shooting was atrocious. The PG we all worried about was controlled for the most part and got in foul trouble taking him out for most of second half.

If USF could shoot.  Or maybe we played good defense?

USF couldn't do anything well. That is one of the worst teams I've ever seen. Strangely enough also one of the biggest teams.

I find it funny, ironic and probably a bunch of other adjectives that everyone clamors for a blowout win, but then when we in fact win a blowout, the other team was the worst team ever.  I don't believe in coincidence that much.

They are 1-13. That's not a coincidence

Quote from: Moose on February 21, 2013, 08:29:17 AM

Quote from: Poison on February 21, 2013, 08:17:57 AM

Quote from: Moose on February 20, 2013, 11:10:09 PM

Quote from: valgoth on February 20, 2013, 10:56:28 PM

just got home, crowd was vocal and louie was great at half. If USF could shoot at all it would have been a 5pt lead at the half. Their first half outside shooting was atrocious. The PG we all worried about was controlled for the most part and got in foul trouble taking him out for most of second half.

If USF could shoot.  Or maybe we played good defense?

USF couldn't do anything well. That is one of the worst teams I've ever seen. Strangely enough also one of the biggest teams.

I find it funny, ironic and probably a bunch of other adjectives that everyone clamors for a blowout win, but then when we in fact win a blowout, the other team was the worst team ever.  I don't believe in coincidence that much.

They are 1-13. That's not a coincidence

I heard multiple people last night including myself, wonder how this team dropped from where they were last year to where they are now.  They lost Gilchrest their leading scorer last year (not by much) and Anderson who was 5th or 6th.  They returned a lot.  Rudd impressed the hell out of me last night and we all know Collins is a legit PG.

Their pieces are more than the sum of their parts.  Granted they stunk but our offense outside of Mean Joe was very efficient. 19 assists out of 24 made baskets is the best passing we've had all year.  A pleasant abberation from our usual spread em out and attack one on one offense.

- Their 7 footer made Curtis Johnson look like Oscar Pistorius.  Painful watching him run.

- We couldn't get our only senior Jamal White on the court for a minute?

- Tomas looked very thin didn't he?

- Seeing the old building packed like that was worth the ridiculously long concession lines.

- Great free throw defense by the student sections.  Active and creative forcing da bulls into a woeful 3 for 12 performance that sealed the deal.

- Who knew white men can jump?