St. John’s news

Runnin' With the Devils

December 3, 2009 by Pico Dulce 4 Comments

Ambiance: Van Halen, “Runnin’ With the Devil” (video link, pops up in new window)

SJ Kennedy vs Jon Scheyer. By Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images North America — DJ Kennedy vs Jon Scheyer. By Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images North America

St. John’s and Duke have been meeting for 11 consecutive years. St. John’s has won two of those games. In the Red Storm/ Blue Devils’ yearly series, there have been some hellacious pastings over the years, some seriously uncompetitive contests, and few signs that St. John’s is among the nation’s elite. In last year’s 76-69 loss, something changed… slightly.

For sure, the game was still a whipping. But despite the turnovers, the Red Storm put in a performance better than their usual game-to-game offensive output, and better than what Duke was allowing to ACC opponents. It’s a small bit of trivia, but perhaps there is something there, a statement that the Red Storm is improving from their 10-point first half in 2007 and the 30 point shellacking two years ago.

Maybe this is the year St. John’s takes a Duke team adjusting to play without Gerald Henderson and Greg Paulus and shocks the college basketball-watching country (or “America” as they say on your favorite reality-TV shows). Maybe this newly confident and deep Red Storm squad won’t take “L” for a result anymore. Just maybe.

The good to take from this: you can fight with Duke. They are thin at guard, so you know what you’re going to get on the perimeter – Scheyer, Nolan Smith, young Andre Dawkins. And while Singler can handle the ball, the team’s depth leans heavily inside. The Blue Devils allowed some pretty sharp shooting from the Badgers, who were not to be mistaken for a crisp perimeter-oriented team.

The Red Storm also played last night, and beat a Stony Brook team that had looked pretty capable. But last night, their wings had trouble getting off shots against the defense at Carnesecca. It was an ugly game, to be sure; and an offensively uneven performance. But St. John’s has shown both confidence and grit, with a 7 to 9 man rotation willing to play many different roles to win. The malleability of the team will serve them well against Duke, a team much bigger than the ones they have faced.

Then again, perhaps the Blue Devils should be adjusting to the Red Storm, ranked #3 in the RPI, as opposed to Duke’s #5. (Small sample sizes – a/k/a early season numbers’ rules – apply.)

Game Information

Tip Off: 3:00 PM, Saturday, December 5
Location: Cameron Indoor Stadium
TV: ESPN2
Radio: Bloomberg 1130; WSJU – on the road!

Team Reviews

Duke (6-1)

duke1 2 G Nolan Smith JR 6’2 185: 17.4 ppg* 4 rpg* 3.2 apg* 36.4% 3-pt

30 G Jon Scheyer SR 6’5 190: 15.9 ppg* 3.1 rpg* 5 apg* 1 spg* 36.8% 3-pt* 89.2% FT

42 F Lance Thomas SR 6’8 225: 5.9 ppg* 4.3 rpg

12 F Kyle Singler JR 6’8 230: 17.1 ppg* 6.3 rpg* 2.7 apg* 2 TO/g* 39.4% 3-pt

21 F-C Miles Plumlee SO 6’10 240: 8.6 ppg* 7.9 rpg* 1.7 bpg* 1.6 TO/g* 59.5% FG

Bench

20 G Andre Dawkins FR 6’4 190: 19.8 mpg* 11 ppg* 55.6% 3-pt

55 C Brian Zoubek SR 7’1 260: 15 mpg* 3.1 ppg* 2.2 rpg

Offensively, Duke is led by the three S’s, Scheyer, Singler, and Smith. In this article, the Duke Chronicle is looking to come up with a nickname for them, working with the Devil motif and the SSS as a hissing noise (before settling on the “Supermen,” which is both weak and a little too Nietzcshean).

Guard: Despite a lack of a nickname (what college trio has a nickname, anyway? Ease off the coffee, budding journalists), Jon Scheyer is one of the best players in college basketball right now and deserves respect. Against Wisconsin he deferred to Singler and Smith but still had a poor 2-7 performance. Last year against St. John’s, Scheyer shot 3 of 8 – not much better – but kept going to the line (especially as St. John’s was trying to extend the game). Smith is a guard with good size and solid overall ability; he is very eager to put up shots in the Blue Devils’ offense, trying to take on Gerald Henderson’s role with some success.

Wing: Kyle “Shampoo” Singler is a matchup problem. He’s tall, mobile enough to do his job defensively, and a scoring threat all over the floor. It will be interesting to see if DJ Kennedy is assigned to bother him, or if Burrell and Evans play him; Justin Brownlee’s defensive abilities on the perimeter have not been used. Perhaps we will see if he has some ability.

Forward: The Dukies are tall up front, with the young but effective Plumlee brothers, Brian Zoubek, Lance Thomas, and Ryan Kelly up front. Miles’ brother Mason Plumlee has started playing creating a tower of power, along with Zoubek and bench player Ryan Kelly, that will be very hard to score over. That’s three McDonald’s All-Americans there, though they don’t score like one assumes an All-American would. Miles has been a very good defensive and offensive rebounder and shot blocker.

St. John’s (6-0)

StJohns150 logo 3 PG Malik Boothe JR 5’9 188: 4.8 ppg* 2.3 apg* 2.7 rpg * 1.5 spg

23 G Paris Horne JR 6’3 191: 7.3 ppg* 3 rpg* 1 spg* 23.8% 3-pt, 37.5% FG

1 G-F DJ Kennedy JR 6’5 215: 17.7 ppg* 4.5 rpg* 3 apg* 2.6 TO/g* 43.5% 3-pt* 56.4% FG

24 F Justin Burrell JR 6’8 235: 5.3 ppg* 3.7 rpg* 51% FG

5 F Sean Evans JR 6’8 255: 8.8 ppg* 7.1 rpg* 45.2% FG

Bench:

12 G Dwight Hardy JR 6’2 187: 22 mpg* 10.7 ppg* 1.3 apg* 40.7% 3-pt

32 F Justin Brownlee JR 6’7 232: 19.5 mpg* 8.3 ppg* 4.8 rpg* 1 spg

DJ Kennedy has been the undisputed star of the team, scoring effectively in a variety of ways and building confidence in his offense. The second fiddle would be Sean Evans, with his ability to get fouled and pick up offensive boards. Guard Dwight Hardy has also scored a bit, but as a whole, the team has not had many crisp performances on offense since Siena. Kennedy will need some help against Duke.

Guard: A big issue is the lack of impact offense from Paris Horne and, to a lesser extent, Malik Boothe. Unlike the first part of last year, Boothe isn’t making plays going to the basket, and his assist rates are down. he is rebounding well and getting to the line, showing his toughness; but at this level of offensive performance, he needs to be taking many more foul shots to become the kind of viable threat that draws defenses (so he can pass to an open shooter). Horne’s says he is pressing; and he needs to be a factor against Duke. His straight-line drives to the hoop leave him vulnerable for aware defensive teams who draw offensive fouls, though, so Duke may not be the slumpbuster. Malik Stith has some scoring ability but has not made a large impact yet. Maybe he will have his Carolina family in the stands – he went to high school in Charlotte, though he grew up in Hempstead, LI.

Wing: DJ Kennedy will make plays, without question. But he needs his teammates to step up as well. Justin Brownlee posted a nice game, and has been a good forward off the bench. We haven’t seen many of his drives at the basket yet. Backup Quincy Roberts hasn’t logged many minutes. Freshman Omari Lawrence has logged some minutes in each game, and is proving to be a decent playmaker, even if his shooting has been off.

Forward: At forward, Burrell had a decent game last night, and looked more willing to attempt his jump shot. That bodes well for the future, but will he be able to get shots off against Lance Thomas and Zoubek? Evans has been a rock; his brand of whirling dervish post chaos could be a factor to thinning out that Duke front line. Dele Coker made a low post move last night that was effective and precise. If he can stay out of foul trouble, he could log some minutes. Rumor has it that Rob Thomas could return on Saturday. His strength and tenacity under the hoop can help ugly up the game for the Red Storm.

Keys to the Game:

Give Yourselves a Chance. Value the basketball. Space correctly. Don’t turn the ball over as much. Concentrate on making the right pass. The team has the ability to be better with the ball than they showed against Stony Brook; Siena only got 13 turnovers out of the Red Storm, and many of this season’s turnovers come later in the game, as the team is comfortably resting on a scoring cushion.

You Ain’t Got No Alibi – Ugly. Whether the pace is slow or semi-fast, St. John’s has to make this a frenetic game for stretches. At their best this season, the Red Storm have caused confusion, stifled shots, and caused turnovers (while often making mistakes in ballhandling themselves). And ugly, gritty game helps St. John’s. I won’t say “favors”; Singler, Scheyer and Smith defeated U Conn in one of the least viewable games of the year. But that sloppy game put the onus on Duke’s defense… and U Conn’s inability to do anything but drive straight at the basket. And when there is a turnover by Duke, that possession needs to culminate in points scored. When there is a scrum at the glass, St. John’s has to come out with the basketball. When a Blue Devil drives to the hoop, he needs to be met with resistance.

The Rediscovered Jump Shot. Certainly, Burrell/ Evans/ Kennedy have the ability to draw a number of fouls on the Duke defenders and put up points at the free throw line. But to really hang with Duke, St. John’s will need to rediscover the jump shooting that started the season. Not exclusively; the team has to drive and get buckets off the turnover – but Hardy, Horne, and Kennedy need to open things up with accurate outside shooting, and the judicious use of the jump shot. Whatever they do – this team needs to open up the court spacing and put some points up.

Do Not Foul Stupidly. They don’t get to the line, so make them work for their foul shots. You know the dumb fouls – the forward who bumps Jon Scheyer on the perimeter, causing Scheyerface to erupt and floppy hands to fly. Or the tickytack touch foul as a guy streaks to the basket and you’re out of position.

Two Outta Three Ain’t Bad. Duke is highly reliant on Scheyer and Singler, with Nolan Smith happy to take up the slack. Two of them need to have a poor game for St. John’s to win this thing. If Lance Thomas scores 20 to win the game, and the St. John’s credibly defend him, then that will just be the way it is. I doubt that will happen.

Prediction: Duke 68, St. John’s 62 – The Red Storm team gives a good effort but on the road at Cameron, comes up short.

Transplanted New Yorker and now Midwesterner Peter a/k/a Pico writes for the East Coast Bias and the Church of Bracketology and for Johnny Jungle, doing the Calm Before the Storm posts.

How to Market to Students Better

October 26, 2009 by Dave Krupinski Leave a Comment

For St. John’s the 2009 Stormfest was a pretty successful day having nearly 1,200 students in attendance. I say, “for St. John’s” because 1,200 students is a lot for a student body who has been largely apathetic towards school spirit for the past few years. However that 1,200 students only makes up about 7% of the student body. To be fair its hard to draw interest from the commuters and that same 1,200 would make up about 20% of the students living on campus.

Joining Johnny Jungle’s efforts to improve student interest, the school has done a lot of work recently to the campus from improving facilities to increasing underclassman residents which has provided the University with a better college atmosphere. The team has also played more Big East games on campus to draw more to the students to the games (there are other financial motives behind it too, I know).

With the team poised to be on the verge of having its most successful season in the past decade, the school could really make strides on building student interest for the athletic program. The school has made some efforts by creating a stimulus program where students can earn “MVP” points for attending school functions. Much like a carnival the students can earn points to redeem for selected prizes.

It’s a pretty cool concept to win free stuff for attending game especially when there are prizes like XBox-360’s available. To my understanding an XBox-360 is somewhere within the 800 point range. Students can earn anywhere from 3-4 points per game which would require them to attend approximately 200+ games to earn a game system. During the course of the 8 months that the students are in school, it would require them to attend more than 6 games a week in order to win an XBox-360. Looks like getting a part time job on campus earning $7.35 an hour is a more realistic option.

So St. John’s is at least giving students an incentive to come but what about making them aware of these things even existing? I was on campus this past week and decided to do a little investigating as I heard there were posters everywhere which made me skeptical. Take a look at what I found in Marillac Hall on my way to the cafeteria. Can you find the St. John’s Stormfest poster? Would you stop on your way to class to look at this board?

So there is three 8×12 sheets of paper promoting the Stormfest event in the midst of the clutter of that bulletin board. Most students put this board into their mental spam folder and either disregard or completely ignore it.

So what can St. John’s do to improve? The aim here isn’t to point the finger and say shame on you, St. John’s but rather look for solutions to help push them further into the right direction.

So here are some suggestions to St. John’s to help lure student interest.

-Work on new incentives for your MVP program: Make the prizes functional yet attainable. Instead of gaming systems, why not games for the system? Other reasonable object suitable for college students. Dorm Furniture? Gift Certificates? Sporting/Concert Tickets? DVDs? If students reach goals quicker than they will be more inclined to keep coming back.

-Adjusted Scale: When we play the Dukes/UConns etc. people are going to show up to the games no matter what. It’s the other games where we need more support. Throw some +10 points for Stony Brook or other OOC games. Also extra points to go to Garden games which requires more of an effort to get to. Beyond basketball give more points to Volleyball, Lax, and Baseball because no one goes to these games but they should all are fun to watch.

-Direct Mailing: Every student on campus has a mailbox and we have our own post office on campus so why not use it? It’s something every student checks. If not go around to every door in the dorms and tape a poster on their door. This will force them to see it and read it rather than passing it up on the bulletin boards in the hall ways.

-Text it: One positive we learned from the almost school shooting we had last year was St. John’s had an awesome safety plan by sending out mass text messages. So if we can send out safety messages why not alert them about the big game?

-Embrace New York: Start reaching out to older basketball players and notable alumni. Every other big time school has notable alumni in the stands for every game. Plus we live in New York there are a ton of celebrities that you can reach out to and invite them to games. It might sound lame but if Jay-Z was sitting on our sideline we’d get 30 more seconds of airtime on ESPN no matter what the outcome.

-What would Turtle do?: For those of you who don’t watch entourage, Turtle, is one of the members of the entourage who is always scheming to make things happen. One episode they were over budget for throwing Vince a birthday party and he managed to get Playboy, Absolute, and other large companies to sponsor the party to bring down the cost. We need to get more promotional events and give-a-ways which will make students want to come to games. Pizza and T-Shirts can’t be the go-to method of luring students to come to games. Do a free semester of tuition contest, book store discounts, movie passes, or heritage nights. What if the MVP points earned you a half court shot for FREE year of tuition? There are plenty of ideas out there but just keep asking yourself what would Turtle do?

-Where do people hang out?: All of signage is in hallways or in staircases. Generally people are always on the go in these areas and not really inclined to stop to read a flyer. Why not put signage outside of the dorms and/or classrooms. People hang outside, smoke cigs, talk before/after class, and it would be more noticeable to them in these areas.

One Poster Isn’t Enough: Putting one poster up a week or few days before isn’t enough. Put one out there for initial and another day of game. Keep everyone on their toes and get a day of game poster. “GAME TONIGHT” “GONE TO THE GAME” Make it the thing to do on campus.

These are just a few ideas that I had to help improve the marketing. The lack of student interest doesn’t only fall on the marketing department’s shoulders. It’s a team effort and everyone needs to be on board from Student Life, Residence Life, Public Safety, Ticket Sales, Coaching Staff, etc. St. John’s has done a lot to improve in the past few years and we’re all pushing them to keep raising the bar and making St. John’s a better institution of higher education. At the end of the day though the best marketing plan is having a winning team and that is something we all hope is in the immediate future.

Other News: St. John’s just announced it’s corporate marketing partnership with ISP Sports. ISP currently works with Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Villanova, and South Florida. Hopefully they bring to the table some of the things we are looking for.

If you have any ideas or suggestions please feel free to post a comment here or in our forums. Go St. John’s!

St. John’s flyer courtesy of Redstormsports.

Jabari Hinds Weighing Options

October 24, 2009 by Zach Smart Leave a Comment

It was during a Westchester County high school football game under the evening lights when I encountered Patrick Theodole. Beyond the Section I sports junkie pleasantries, we became immersed in conversation.

The topic? Not football.

Instead, we talked the leaps-and-bounds growth of Jabarie Hinds. Hinds, who cooked opponents to the recipe of 37 points per game down at Bob Gibbons and has evolved into more of a prolific scorer while developing a dependable jumper, has become the hunted in the world of Big East recruiting.

I rattled off a number of top-flight Division-I schools that were actively hounding the latest guard from Westchester’s richest hoops real estate. It certainly elicited a response from Theodole, who’s one of the Knights’ many assistant coaches under longtime coach Bob Cimmino.

“Oh, there’s more schools on his list than that,” Theodole said, reacting to my list of around 8-10 potential Division-I suitors for Hinds.

Theodole—who teaches at Hastings High School, my alma mater—is not wrong here.

“They all seem hungry,” said Hinds, a junior guard who was Pippen to Sherrod Wright’s Jordan, operating offense for the Knights last season.

“I got offers from Oklahoma State, UNLV, Wake Forest, Seton Hall, St. John’s, James Madison, Louisville, and a couple more.”

Hinds has no favorites, no leaders yet. He hasn’t cut any schools from a list that’s akin to a 7-year-old’s Christmas gift list in length.

You can’t write off any team yet. The blink-quick, springy guard still has two years of high school remaining.
Even James Madison, which may or may not be at the bottom of his list, has a tie to Hinds. Former Mount Vernon standout Jomo Belfor, who plays against Hinds during the Knights’ traditional open gyms, played for the Dukes a few years ago.

Hinds keeps his former teammates, many of whom Mount Vernon molded and launched to Big East careers, close to his presence. Kevin Jones (West Virginia), Mike Colburn (Rutgers) and Jonathon Mitchell ((Rutgers) remain tight with Hinds.

“I learned a lot (from the older guys). I played behind Mike Colburn when he was in high school, so I learned a lot from him. (Former Mount Vernon Knights now playing in the Big East or elsewhere) always come up to the gym, in the off-season we work out. We play open gym. They teach me a lot of stuff, and you know, I teach them stuff too.”

As the lone acclaimed player—and one of the few players who played a significant role on last year’s squad—returning, Hinds has rapidly evolved into the face of this storied program.
He knows he’s going to hold some ownership of the team this year.

“Everything is mine now,” said Hinds. “I’m the captain. I’m the only starter back right now, so everybody’s got to work for a spot and go hard in practice every day.
Is keeping a perennial power intact a heavy burden?

“Always,” said Hinds.

“The pressure is there, big time. We need to play hard, go hard every day in practice, make sure we take no plays off, and we should be alright.”

If Hinds continues to orchestrate the offense and grow as a scorer, his future hardwood home should be better than alright.

For more recruiting info please visit our friends at NBE Basketball