Wow PRJohnnies looking up past posts just to hate on me. Clearly he is selective in what he reads. My points have just been that Lav should have been more fairly assessed and that this season was disappointing even more than I had thought. And I expect to knock on NCAA door next year with that talent-that is so terrible?
Yes, because your boy didn't make the NCAA Tournament with his massive recruiting haul until they were seniors (their 4th year) and you now expect Mullin to make it with his massive recruiting haul in their freshmen year (their 1st year).
As to your point TRabinowitz- If that 2011-2012 core came intact (and up until the DQs and late arrivals) I whole heartedly expected for that team to be serious contenders in March.
Moe, Jakarr, Dom, Amir, Nuri, Dee, Phil, Norvel, Amir, Gift that was a damn good collection of talent. And I have stated before that team would have put one hell of a scare if not beating into Kentucky. That was the #3 class in nation.
Fast Forward to now- Bashir, Ponds, Freudenberg (now #17 in nation and tops in BE), maybe Alkins or Thon and we jump? Added to Lovett, Yakwe, Sima, Mussini, Ellison-that on paper is a nice collection. My point being is that this is a talented group but not at same level as 2011-2012 when I expected tourney before the DQs. While March as a guarantee will be a stretch with the inexperience here I dont think NCAA knocking on the door is a stretch and certainly good NIT showing. Anything less than that I will start to have doubts.
Just like Mullin doesn't get credit for LoVett (yet) Lavin doesn't get credit the great Norvel Pelle, and a class that was ranked #3 in the nation because he never actually produced that class. Nurideen Lindsey was the second coming of Allen Iverson, until Kentucky took his lunch money, and vagina started bleeding uncontrollably.
As St.John's fans, (at least the ones with the intelligence to predict the future based on the past) we know that top ranked freshman are not a proven commodity. Out of that magnificent massively over-hyped freshman class, there were two players who were ready to play in the BE. I don't want to call out who they are, because it's completely obvious who they are. This next highly rated class will probably include many of the same types of players in that some will be very good right away, others will take more time and some simply won't be very good at all for a number of reasons.
That said, what it really comes down to is a coach with a system-one that will build a program that includes all aspects of that program. Since Lou, we've had coaches that could recruit, coaches that could teach defense, coaches that ignored a recruit's off the court behavior, coaches who couldn't recognize the talent they had and coaches who spent their entire tenure here in search of someone else to blame for their own failures. (Yes, that last one is Norm Roberts) But what will determine whether Mullin is right for this job is whether or not he and his staff can recruit, and then develop those recruits into players that fit a system in his vision.
Lavin brought a name back to St.John's. He did a lot of good here, and for that, I'm not going to bash him every time his name comes up. It wasn't an embarrassment to wear a St.John's t-shirt when he was here. It wasn't great either, but after Harrington and Roberts turned us into the laughing stock of D1 basketball, he made us relevant and he deserves credit for that. What he wasn't able to do was something that he never intended to do, and that is to recruit a specific kind of player that fit into specific kind of system. He collected talent from far and wide, but they were not a team. Last year excluded, (because it really started to come together in Feb of last year) Lavin recruited talented players who hadn't chosen STJ because they wanted to be part of something that they understood. They chose STJ only because of Lavin. And when they got here, for the first three years they were here, it seems like each player was playing a different game and all at the same time.
Two things we've seen from Mullin and his staff:
1. He is making an active attempt to recruit locally
2. He is particularly interested in foreign talent
IMO, he will succeed only if there is an understood vision for how these players will become a team.