St. John's Post Game Thread

[Jumpman62114]

St Johns roster construction is better than UConn’s this season, and is built to exploit our weakness. Our margin for error is slim against a team like st johns this year. Not many levers too pull until the offseason tbh. We can still beat good teams with big shooting performances, but those dont happen consistently. Anyone surprised by today’s outcome hasn’t been watching.

 

[superjohn]

One final four, maybe two BE championships total?

Carnesecca won 5 Big East regular season titles, 2 Big East tournaments and was 526-200 overall at St. John's. He was 294-115 overall while coaching St. John's in the Big East and 127-69 in Big East play. That was back when the Big East was the premier conference in the country. He didn't have a ton of NCAA tournament success but he goes all the way back to the NIT days and had success before the NCAA tournament became the thing. He was excellent at St. John's.

 

[Hoophound]

Carnesecca won 5 Big East regular season titles, 2 Big East tournaments and was 526-200 overall at St. John's. He was 294-115 overall while coaching St. John's in the Big East and 127-69 in Big East play. That was back when the Big East was the premier conference in the country. He didn't have a ton of NCAA tournament success but he goes all the way back to the NIT days and had success before the NCAA tournament became the thing.

He had dominating teams. I think his lack of success in the tourney was probably more dumb luck than anything else. However, my impression of his teams when I was a kid was that with the exception of Chris Mullin and Malik Sealy, he lacked shooters. They’ve always been a fighting program rather than a finesse one.

 

[uh-no]

We outrebounded them, got to the foul line more, didn't have one of our REALLY bad TO games (i mean it' wasn't good, but relatively)

And we got blown out. 6-23. 23-59.

We didn't generate good shots, and they didn't go in. And this team's defense isn't good enough to rely upon..

I don't think we were winning that game either way, but it's at least a game.

 

[Gurleyman]

The problem with us rebounding is that Johnson is not a good rebounding five. The stats don’t lie. He is what he is. So the best remedy for that would be to have a bulldog rebounder at the 4. Which we don’t. AK was perfectly good there next to Sanogo or Clingan. Or AK/Johnson worked for small stretches last year, with Newton and Castle being good defensive rebounders from the backcourt. Now it’s a problem. McNeeley does a good job, but we rebound poorly for our position at the 1,2,4 and 5. Whereas last year it was really only the 4 and that wasn’t even noticeable because AK would grab his four or five per game and that was all we needed. Now we get 8 per game from our starting 4 and 5 and it’s harder to mask.

Not only do we struggle with the defensive glass in key spots … we don’t get many putbacks for cheap points when our offense goes into dry spells.

 

[HuskyWarrior611]

Their strength (guard play) is our weakness. I'm sure the staff will fix it, but nothing we can do about it until next season.

Pitino and Calhoun are 1A and 1B as far as all time guard development.

 

[jdb50]

Missing 8 shots in a row in the last minute before halftime summed up the game. Our players basically had the yips due to the St Johns defensive pressure. Stewart should not be a non factor on the court but that is on him. He does not like to mix it up. Again with us struggling to get loose balls. The whole team had butterfingers. We can play way better and it has to start Wednesday.

 

[jibsey]

All you need to do to see how outmatched we were is watch every rebound in the game. SJU soared over us time and time again grabbing boards and making putbacks or gaining extra possessions. Their offensive rebounding was spectacular. I have no idea what the actual stats were but they got every important rebound. Every damn one. We were so outclassed athletically.

We outrebounded them 39-36. But they got rebounds and putbacks. We always miss a ton of drives and layups. They made 30 fg we made 26. FT’s were almost even. They made 2 more 3’s than we did. Solo annd Alex only ones to make an 3. and don’t forget that 8 point play.

 

[HuskyWarrior611]

I know Pitino couldn’t wait for Clingan to leave lol.

Took him 2 years to takeover the Big East. The elite coaches from the last era are different.

 

[Burnt Corn]

No chance, he was always one and done and he's a lottery pick. He's being asked to carry way too much on this team. He had a really rough game but he's a stud and the least of our problems.

Enough with the lottery pick bull . He may go but at this point he isn’t remotely ready physically or shot wise to have any impact in the NBA, and it’s not even close

 

[HooperScooper]

Obviously not happening now but he was on the preseason lists

Surprisingly he made the cut to the final 20 for the Wooden Award less than 2 weeks ago.

John R. Wooden Award® Men's Late Midseason Top 20 Watch List

www.woodenaward.com

 

[HooperScooper]

Well said John. Being real. Pitino has done a heck of a job with St. John's. AND you are right. Johnnies are frigging good.. Everybody on the team shoots threes.

At a terrible clip though. Before today's game they shot threes at 29.8%. That's last in the Big East and 341st out of 355 teams. That's obviously not why they're good.

 

[mauconnfan]

Not so sure about Nowell. His dad has been tweeting some, not so positive things.

Can’t blame him!

 

[mauconnfan]

Our plan going into the game was to stop their penetration and make them shoot 3’s. We did what was drawn up, but St. John’s went off from 3 in the first half. Then on the other side the combination of McNeeley/Karaban/Ball who are our 3 main scorers shot 3/18 in the first half. That was the whole ballgame. Give St. John’s credit because they hit some tough 3’s with hands in their face. They play tough defense and get away with a lot of physicality. I don’t see St. John’s winning more than 2 games in the NCAA tournament. I usually like to root for other BE teams but they are very unlikeable to me personally.

Agree and you are correct most of their made 3s were guarded as well as they could, rattled a bunch in nothing you can do. Another horrid first half, a pattern which kills. Even on the 23-8 run to get it to 9 you felt it was just too much to make up. Only good first half in about 10-11 games was Liam’s career game other than that we’re in a hole most every game.

 

[mauconnfan]

If I'm Duke I don't wanna see the Johnnies in my bracket.

See I think Duke rips them up, as would plenty others. St John’s only exposes our huge inability to get a step on their in the grill defenders like Smith and Scott, others. Thing is players with athletic ability to get a step and dribble in the will send the Johnnies defense into scramble mode, hate to say Duke has a few of those type players.

 

[mauconnfan]

I forgot the game was on but I’m happy for Pitino. He has built something special. If we can’t win this year, we should root for the Johnnies. A title game of Duke and St. John’s would be epic.

Um let me think? No!!

Well against Duke maybe but the Johnnie’s won’t get near the final four so let’s hope it’s around the 16.

 

[mauconnfan]

Let’s stop the ridiculous talk saying they are an NIT team…..they have 5 quad 1 wins which is tied for 22nd and are 36 in Kenpom. They played 8 games without their best player, have 7 losses by 6 or less and have played with a banged up backcourt.

And yes this is a team has a lot of flaws, no need to rehash them…..we all know that.

But not far fetched that they can’t win out the next 4 with 3 at home and get some momentum going into the Big East tournament.

Let’s not write off the season yet.

.

But the issue is we can’t write off they could lose all 4 either can we? Not from what I’ve been seeing at least if anyone thinks Georgetown or PC at the Donut will be easy with the way our guys have been playing you’re wrong.

Need to go 3-1 because 2-2 will create a need for maybe 2 wins in the big East tourney. Lots of people were watching the Hall and Johnnie’s games and even watching the Nova game they were not very good for 30 minutes and Kyle helped us out with his inept coaching.

Can you say bubble?

 

[mauconnfan]

Calhoun had his down years where it fell apart, most notably the Dyson and sophomore Kemba team. Last year was kind of an anomaly for this program where we didn’t step back after winning. But some other down years where nothing worked (often for being young):

1997 we had suspensions and Rickety and ended up really young.
2001 was the freshman Caron/Taliek team and senior Mouring. Didn’t come together.
2007 we were just super young. Our entire team was freshmen and sophomores - none of which were one and done
2010 we were a dumpster fire on top of a train wreck.
2012 we pretty much stunk with Drummond and Oriakhi trying to play alongside each other and did just enough to get in and then get crushed by Iowa State.

They were always years we bounced back from.

Yeah but JC didn’t have the portal to bail him out when people left early. And recruiting kids who won’t come because they’re not sure Ray, Rip, Yell, Caron, Rudy and others may be leaving created holes in classes. To me not apples to apples.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

We had a great offense through the Marquette game, and then two things happened: 1) McNeeley returned, and played a lot more hero ball than he had been playing prior to his injury, and 2) Diarra got hurt.

Hurley has to fix the way McNeeley is playing. McNeeley is a GREAT player, so we need him to play within the offense rather than ISO ball. He is not quite as good an ISO player as he thinks he is, but he could be, and was, a scoring machine within our set offense.

Diarra's injury is pretty much devastating. Diarra looks like hell. It makes my knees hurt watching him play. He is at 60-70% at best and the only reason he plays at all is Hurley thinks we have no alternatives. The thing is, our offense does not work without a point guard, so play Mahaney and Nowell 25 minutes and Diarra 15. The offense can't be any worse than it is now, and we need to rest Diarra to have any prayer of winning a game in the NCAA tournament.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

There is no rational assessment of our roster right now that doesn’t result in both Reed and Johnson being in our top 5. Why not play them together for a few minutes every game?

 

[auror]

At a terrible clip though. Before today's game they shot threes at 29.8%. That's last in the Big East and 341st out of 355 teams. That's obviously not why they're good.

Where does this 355 number come from? There's 364 teams in D1.

 

[auror]

We outrebounded them, got to the foul line more, didn't have one of our REALLY bad TO games (i mean it' wasn't good, but relatively)

And we got blown out. 6-23. 23-59.

We didn't generate good shots, and they didn't go in. And this team's defense isn't good enough to rely upon..

I don't think we were winning that game either way, but it's at least a game.

We had the best non-Villanova offensive game against this St. John's defense in conference play.

 

[JohnFSilver]

Team gets zero off its defense, no easy baskets. And, offensively play so damn slow.

 

[UCann]

Typical overreaction in this thread. This is our first real loss by a significant margin since Liam has been back (and we were undefeated with him on the mainland before he got hurt). The team is a late bloomer and will benefit from the home stretch of games to figure things out. Give them a little more time before bailing. We figure some things out, loosen up, hopefully a little momentum down the stretch and then better refs in the tourney will give us a chance. I’m still on the bandwagon even though it seems to be emptying.