Welcome to The Holy Land of Hoops

6:30 ET St. John's at Georgetown
Tim Brando play-by-play & Jim Jackson analyst

Line: Georgetown by 6.5

Every game we have played recently since the 3 game winning streak has brought us right back down to earth. We are reverting back to the LIU, Delaware St, PSU version from earlier in the season. Our last two games were over at halftime. Teams are consistently flirting with 100 points against us. Our defense is nonexistent. I am glad we fired Lavin, but man...he gave us some tough defensive teams I think we were top 50 most years in defense with him here. The problem with his teams was that they had zero offense or player development then recruiting fell off. So under Lav we had good defense but no offense...now under Mullin we have good offense but no defense. Will we ever put both together at the same time? Yakwe, Ahmed, Amar, Freudenberg, etc. are all mid major level players. Let's just be real. Our only somewhat decent big is Owens and he is a toothpick. It makes no sense...I watch so many other teams even mid majors that somehow find these 6'8-6'9 225+ lb bigs who can make layups, dunk it, develop a solid hook shot, play solid defense, and rebound. Under Lavin I used to say everyone else seemed to find shooters, why can't we? Now, it's everyone seems to find serviceable bigs, why can't we? I truly wonder how much of this failure is coaching and how much is the fact that the players are not very good. I'm sick of watching our games knowing that 95% of the time the opponent has the ball, they will score somehow, some way against our horrendous defense. The problem is that opponents have learned to close out on our guards shooting and they don't give them any space knowing they want to shoot everything. The second we have defenders in our guards' faces and they can't make an open shot, who else can we go to? Ahmed is the only other realistic option and he's the most out of control player I've ever seen in major hoops. This is a guy who missed a dunk with no one within 15 ft of him, because he dropped the ball on the way up and routinely throws his body inside without concentrating on where the ball or the hoop is. Teams know not to foul him and let him fall awkwardly, because is never under control. And this is our BEST 3rd option. Yakwe is a cookie cutter OSNA recruit...they get kids from Africa who first started playing when they were 13 or 14 and are extremely raw, skinny, and athletic but with minimal skill. We have to stop recruiting so much there unless there's a can't miss like Diallo but even he rode the bench at Kansas as a McDonald's All American MVP. Sima was butter soft. Freudenberg is still a freshman but he looks very slow and timid. Amar turns the ball over 75% of the time he tries to make a play.

We need to end our OSNA experiment and we also need to end our foreign player experiment. So far out of all these foreign players of Amar, Mussini, Freudenberg, Sima, zero would start on a decent Big East team. I have a feeling that if we were Gonzaga, Mussini would be like Kevin Pangos. Really hope Matt A has a trick up his sleeve, because we are in absolutely desperate need of real bigs. I just want to watch a consistently decent team again that has legitimate tournament aspirations. I'm so sick of being bullied.

Just curious what happens if JT3 loses this game. His seat would get hot correct?

This could be St. John's first Big East road win since March 4th, 2015 over Marquette or Georgetown's first regular season Big East win since February 8th, 2016 over St. John's. Who would think it would be like this after conference realignment?

JohnW22 wrote:This could be St. John's first Big East road win since March 4th, 2015 over Marquette or Georgetown's first regular season Big East win since February 8th, 2016 over St. John's. Who would think it would be like this after conference realignment?

actually, we did win a big east road game at depaul last week, but totally get your point.....hoping sju can keep it respectable tonight.....gtown has to break through at some point.....

SJHooper wrote:Every game we have played recently since the 3 game winning streak has brought us right back down to earth. We are reverting back to the LIU, Delaware St, PSU version from earlier in the season. Our last two games were over at halftime. Teams are consistently flirting with 100 points against us. Our defense is nonexistent. I am glad we fired Lavin, but man...he gave us some tough defensive teams I think we were top 50 most years in defense with him here. The problem with his teams was that they had zero offense or player development then recruiting fell off. So under Lav we had good defense but no offense...now under Mullin we have good offense but no defense. Will we ever put both together at the same time? Yakwe, Ahmed, Amar, Freudenberg, etc. are all mid major level players. Let's just be real. Our only somewhat decent big is Owens and he is a toothpick. It makes no sense...I watch so many other teams even mid majors that somehow find these 6'8-6'9 225+ lb bigs who can make layups, dunk it, develop a solid hook shot, play solid defense, and rebound. Under Lavin I used to say everyone else seemed to find shooters, why can't we? Now, it's everyone seems to find serviceable bigs, why can't we? I truly wonder how much of this failure is coaching and how much is the fact that the players are not very good. I'm sick of watching our games knowing that 95% of the time the opponent has the ball, they will score somehow, some way against our horrendous defense. The problem is that opponents have learned to close out on our guards shooting and they don't give them any space knowing they want to shoot everything. The second we have defenders in our guards' faces and they can't make an open shot, who else can we go to? Ahmed is the only other realistic option and he's the most out of control player I've ever seen in major hoops. This is a guy who missed a dunk with no one within 15 ft of him, because he dropped the ball on the way up and routinely throws his body inside without concentrating on where the ball or the hoop is. Teams know not to foul him and let him fall awkwardly, because is never under control. And this is our BEST 3rd option. Yakwe is a cookie cutter OSNA recruit...they get kids from Africa who first started playing when they were 13 or 14 and are extremely raw, skinny, and athletic but with minimal skill. We have to stop recruiting so much there unless there's a can't miss like Diallo but even he rode the bench at Kansas as a McDonald's All American MVP. Sima was butter soft. Freudenberg is still a freshman but he looks very slow and timid. Amar turns the ball over 75% of the time he tries to make a play.

We need to end our OSNA experiment and we also need to end our foreign player experiment. So far out of all these foreign players of Amar, Mussini, Freudenberg, Sima, zero would start on a decent Big East team. I have a feeling that if we were Gonzaga, Mussini would be like Kevin Pangos. Really hope Matt A has a trick up his sleeve, because we are in absolutely desperate need of real bigs. I just want to watch a consistently decent team again that has legitimate tournament aspirations. I'm so sick of being bullied.

Get your bi-polar disorder under control. Calling kids half a season in college ball mid-major level at best shows a lack of respect you have for the program you claim to cheer for.

Johnnies haven't won at Georgetown since 2003, and most them haven't been close. Tonight Georgetown will have an enormous advantage with their bigs vs ours. We need both Ponds and LoVett to be on fire, and hope Thompson coaches another bad game. Georgetown has to be down after the Butler game, maybe St. Johns steals one tonight.

I was looking at St John's defensive stats for the last several years and one thing shows just how different the game has gotten...

in 2012, St John's adjusted defensive rating in KP was 99.9. That was good enough for #164 in the country.
in 2017, St John's adjusted defensive rating in KP is 102.5. That right now is #130 in the country.

So it's a lot more offense now than before. #164 now defense rating is 104.2- a good 4.3 worse than before.

sju88grad wrote:

JohnW22 wrote:This could be St. John's first Big East road win since March 4th, 2015 over Marquette or Georgetown's first regular season Big East win since February 8th, 2016 over St. John's. Who would think it would be like this after conference realignment?

actually, we did win a big east road game at depaul last week, but totally get your point.....hoping sju can keep it respectable tonight.....gtown has to break through at some point.....

I'm dumb, completely forgot...opps

NJRedman wrote:

SJHooper wrote:Every game we have played recently since the 3 game winning streak has brought us right back down to earth. We are reverting back to the LIU, Delaware St, PSU version from earlier in the season. Our last two games were over at halftime. Teams are consistently flirting with 100 points against us. Our defense is nonexistent. I am glad we fired Lavin, but man...he gave us some tough defensive teams I think we were top 50 most years in defense with him here. The problem with his teams was that they had zero offense or player development then recruiting fell off. So under Lav we had good defense but no offense...now under Mullin we have good offense but no defense. Will we ever put both together at the same time? Yakwe, Ahmed, Amar, Freudenberg, etc. are all mid major level players. Let's just be real. Our only somewhat decent big is Owens and he is a toothpick. It makes no sense...I watch so many other teams even mid majors that somehow find these 6'8-6'9 225+ lb bigs who can make layups, dunk it, develop a solid hook shot, play solid defense, and rebound. Under Lavin I used to say everyone else seemed to find shooters, why can't we? Now, it's everyone seems to find serviceable bigs, why can't we? I truly wonder how much of this failure is coaching and how much is the fact that the players are not very good. I'm sick of watching our games knowing that 95% of the time the opponent has the ball, they will score somehow, some way against our horrendous defense. The problem is that opponents have learned to close out on our guards shooting and they don't give them any space knowing they want to shoot everything. The second we have defenders in our guards' faces and they can't make an open shot, who else can we go to? Ahmed is the only other realistic option and he's the most out of control player I've ever seen in major hoops. This is a guy who missed a dunk with no one within 15 ft of him, because he dropped the ball on the way up and routinely throws his body inside without concentrating on where the ball or the hoop is. Teams know not to foul him and let him fall awkwardly, because is never under control. And this is our BEST 3rd option. Yakwe is a cookie cutter OSNA recruit...they get kids from Africa who first started playing when they were 13 or 14 and are extremely raw, skinny, and athletic but with minimal skill. We have to stop recruiting so much there unless there's a can't miss like Diallo but even he rode the bench at Kansas as a McDonald's All American MVP. Sima was butter soft. Freudenberg is still a freshman but he looks very slow and timid. Amar turns the ball over 75% of the time he tries to make a play.

We need to end our OSNA experiment and we also need to end our foreign player experiment. So far out of all these foreign players of Amar, Mussini, Freudenberg, Sima, zero would start on a decent Big East team. I have a feeling that if we were Gonzaga, Mussini would be like Kevin Pangos. Really hope Matt A has a trick up his sleeve, because we are in absolutely desperate need of real bigs. I just want to watch a consistently decent team again that has legitimate tournament aspirations. I'm so sick of being bullied.

Get your bi-polar disorder under control. Calling kids half a season in college ball mid-major level at best shows a lack of respect you have for the program you claim to cheer for.

Do you get along with anyone on this board? It seems like all you try to do is pick fights rather than attack things point by point on subject matter like grown men do. Yakwe has zero skill...he's just a body. Amar could be a good player for a team like Marist. Not at this level. Freudenberg still has time, but if he's going to really contribute his game will have to do a 180 and fast. We were told he was much more than a catch and shoot guy but right now he's just a bigger Mussini. I'm sure he will improve but not to the degree we need him to. Ahmed is the most wild out of control player in the conference and to be honest on any college hoops team I've ever seen. He is probably used to getting foul calls every time he threw his body in JUCO but now defenders have their hands straight up and he spins out of control with no call and misses the shots. He's good for a big game every once in a while but he's not consistently playing at a high level. Again, he would not start on a Big East team other than ours. He'd be a decent bench player at this level. It's interesting that you accuse anyone of giving fitting reactions to the teams high and lows as being "bipolar", though it's the team's play that is "bipolar" not the reactions. You make zero sense wanting everyone to "rah-rah" when we lost the last 2 games by halftime. This season wasn't supposed to be dominating but we were supposed to win 15-17 and be a year away from the tourney. Now it looks very likely that even next year we won't be close (15 wins at best) with 2018-2019 looking like the first season we can expect anything close to being a bubble team. Some SJ fans got so high on the 3 game winning streak that they think that's good enough for the whole season. News flash...it's not. I kept telling everyone it was a great winning streak and we showed real progress but not to get too crazy since it's still so early. The past 2 games, the pre-Cuse/Butler team showed up. If the team is up and down, you would logically expect the fanbase to be as well. So to act like that is abnormal is just plain wrong. No fanbase in America is always happy even after their favorite team's past few games have been over by halftime. There should still be expectations for this team this year. You either have them or you don't. Do you? Because I do...we have some talent this is not a throwaway year like last year.