Is that the same Sports Illustrated that looks the other way when the big boys cheat. North Carolina hasn't required its players to attend classes for decades...and Towson is on probation. But I digress.
Yes, you do. Sports Illustrated is the most important sports publication in the history of the universe and they don't put people on probation, the NCAA does, as they did with Saint John's. And in their role as sports arbiters they named Jarvis as an extraordinary criminal, this in a world that included murder at Baylor, longstanding institutional corruption at Kentucky, organized crime involvement in sports betting that ended up with Jack Molinas getting his brains splattered across his lawn, Madame Rick Pitino and even John Calipari. That's saying something extraordinary.
I can stipulate that a coach whose record is in constant decline can expect to be fired. That was the case with Jarvis. Forgetting the "forfeited" games which a whimpering Harrington ceded over a one point per game player who liked his trim, the Jarvis years were the best we had since the mid 80s. 98-99 we won 28 games and finished in the top ten in polls. 99-00 we won 25 games and also finished in the top ten. We appeared in the top 20 the following year before falling off the charts. In Jarvis' five full years, we were in the NCAA's three times and won the NIT once.
For someone who claims to be against revisionist history, you play loose with facts. Which facts include that most of Jarvis's wins were vacated by the NCAA, as was his NIT title. He won 66 games total at SJU. Father Harrington had nothing to do with the forfeits and the sanctions and the probation, that was the NCAA: "The N.C.A.A. instead placed St. John's on probation," that from the NY Times. Father Harrington OTOH is the priest who threatened to disband the basketball program in the wake of Jarhead's disastrous tenure, in which cash payments were made to amateur athletes, a Skills for Life graduate beat a female student, and routine benign investigatory processes were compared to rape by the Nazis. Which tenure began with inheriting an NCAA tournament team and ended with bequeathing a 6 win team facing the death penalty, without which sterling legacy Norm Roberts would never have been hired as SJ coach in a million years.
The players are not that bad. Not so bad they got blown out at home by STAC...along with other blowouts that included Fordham, some Texas school no one ever heard of...and the coke bottle glasses wearing players at New Jersey Institute of Technology. I'm too embarrassed to run down the rest of the recording losing streak debacles.
If you care about the score in an exhibition game perhaps you embarrass too easily. Saint John's has been getting blown out on the regular for 20 years. They all run together for me - I can't tell them apart anymore and anyway I have 100 other things that make me blush. And yes, the players are that bad, just about the least talented team I've ever seen at SJU except maybe the post orgy team left behind when Jarvis's exemplary student athletes were expelled.
Again, we're on the same page re: Mullin. I don't care that he sits on the scorers table chewing gum or lets his assistants take over during times out. He's a cool guy with his own style. What's wrong with the picture is no one is teaching defense so crappy teams like Creighton can light us up for 100 points and the fan base complains about their coach not having class for calling the dogs off.
I love it when we can reach common ground. It appeals to the kinder gentler FOAD I have been attempting to cultivate. Thanks at least for that.