(2) Sunday Big East Games 11/27/16

[MackNova]

I knew the Mullin hire was too good to be true. I will give Mullin one more year. If Zach Brown is eligible and plays (7'1 major center recruit) along with Clark and our team still has no real sign of massive improvement, then he has to go. You give him a hug, tell him you are the best player to ever play for us, thank him for trying, and part ways. So honestly we don't know yet, but I assume that if most were forced to bet their house they would bet that it won't work out (including myself based on what I've seen so far). You can kick and scream and say "but we are young man!" or "just be patient!". The truth is, our fanbase is so used to losing and mediocrity that we don't even have high standards. If we can't finish out this season going into next season on a promising note with clear improvement, then we need to get a rising star young coach.

Is this a serious post? What did you expect? Steve Lavin left that roster as barren as I've ever seen a Big East roster. Only 8% of the minutes in 2014-15 returned in 2015-16. He had to recruit a whole new team.

If you fire Chris Mullin two years into one of the biggest rebuilds in recent memory in the Big East, it would be one of the most shortsighted moves ever. How the hell can anyone judge Mullin? They have the 2nd-youngest team in the country. Mullin was never going to win anything until his 4th season here, unless he got extremely lucky.

Plus, what coach would ever want to go to St. John's if you're willing to fire a coach two years into a rebuild? If I'm an up-and-coming coach, and I see a program fire the biggest legend its team has ever produced just two years into his tenure, I would view that as a giant red flag, and I would view the job as toxic. St. John's hasn't won a tournament game in 16 years, I get that there is frustration in the fanbase, but none of that is Mullin's fault. He inherited an utter disaster.

You really need to recalibrate you short-term expectations. I've been as critical of St. John's and Mullin as everyone, mostly because people were crowning him as an amazing recruiter because he was involved with Thon Maker and Rawle Alkins. Mullin hasn't proven anything yet. I have no idea how good of a coach he is. Nobody does - it's impossible with this roster.

KenPom has St. John's as the #99 team in the nation. Given how young the roster is, it's impressive that they've gone from 211 to 99 in a year. And even with the improved rating, they're still expected to go 5-13 in the Big East, and they're only favored in the two DePaul games. This league isn't kind to rebuilding teams.

I'm a Brooklyn Nets fan. I've already resigned myself to the team being garbage for the foreseeable future. St. John's won't have to wait as long to compete as the Nets will, but you need to take his early results with a grain of salt.

[JohnW22]

Giving up on Mullin already?? Am I missing something here? For the most part I'd say Big East coaching is pretty good. I'd say the top tier is Wright, Cooley, and McDermott and the only one close to those four is Mack. The two coaches I'm not sold on yet is Holtman and Willard but that's just my opinion.

[stever20]

Giving up on Mullin already?? Am I missing something here? For the most part I'd say Big East coaching is pretty good. I'd say the top tier is Wright, Cooley, and McDermott and the only one close to those four is Mack. The two coaches I'm not sold on yet is Holtman and Willard but that's just my opinion.

If things go south this year for Seton Hall, could Willard be on the hot seat?

[milksteak]

The two coaches I'm not sold on yet is Holtman and Willard but that's just my opinion.

How are you not sold on Holtmann? Third year in a row his team dips into the Top 25. On his way to another Tournament bid with potentially zero pro prospects (Kelan might make it into the league). All of the Stevens leftovers are gone, and he might have his best team (You could make an argument that Stevens recruited Chrabascz blah blah blah).

What else does he have to do?

[SJHooper]

Maybe I'm jumping the gun a bit, but you can't really blame me. We even made the list of most underachieving programs that used to be great along with Georgetown recently. As you said, 0 tourney wins the past 16 years. Not only is that very bad, that's actually hard to do. Now even making the tourney seems to be this huge achievement even though it shouldn't be with a program like ours. It just seems we are stuck in this cycle where we get a new coach, excitement and hype builds, and we ceiling out at going to the tourney maybe 1 time every 4 years (when they are all seniors). The truth is, it's not nearly as crazy for teams with freshmen and sophs to make the tourney. Again, I point to Seton Hall a few years back when they had that great freshmen class. They actually won a lot of games. In the games they lost, they still looked promising. So it's wrong to assume that just because a team has lots of freshmen and sophs that it's a valid excuse to be awful. Is it tougher to have a good season? Sure. But you can expect such a team to win 1 of the 4 games in the the Atlantis tournament. That is not asking too much.

Our big men have regressed, not improved and that's one of the biggest signs to me that Mullin is likely not the answer. We don't run any set plays, just kind of freestyle. For the life of me, I cannot understand why teams like ODU can rebound so well with bad recruits, yet we can't rebound at all with good recruits. This goes back to the Lavin days too. Our tiny guards at 6 ft tall routinely outrebound our 6'10 and 6'11 guys. That's how bad it is. So again, I'm not looking for a finished product at this point, I'm simply looking for signs of hope and noticing clear improvement. We have better players but our more experienced guys have stayed the same or gotten worse. College is only 4 years...not 100 years. The consensus of the SJ fanbase (and many outside of it) seems to be that you should only expect a tourney berth once every 4 years because then they will be seniors. That is wrong and those are the low expectations I'm sick of normalizing. Next year we will have a mix of juniors, sophs, and freshmen. Can we expect winning then? Or do we have to wait until they are super seniors and stay for 5 years? No excuses next year. None. Yakwe, Sima, Mussini, and I think Owens will all be upperclassmen. Ahmed will be an upperclassman. Clark will be an upperclassman. Justin Simon will be a soph. Freudenberg will be a soph. LoVett and Ponds will be sophs. You may be able to make points against me this year but not next year.

In the old Big East we were on the outside looking in on all the action 99% of the time. So far in the new Big East the same is happening. I just want this program to be relevant nationally again. Eventually the youth excuses will be gone and the wins will need to be there.

[Edrick]

He is pretty clearly one of, it not the, best coaches in the conference. Its not even really debatable.

He also has a Top 20 class coming in, if we're forgetting the whole making the NCAA Tournament and being ranked every year thing.

[MackNova]

Entrenched coaches
- Jay Wright (probably belongs in his own category)
- Chris Mack

Very good coaches
- Greg McDermott
- Ed Cooley
- Chris Holtmann

Something to prove
- Kevin Willard
- Woj
- Dave Leitao
- Chris Mullin

On the hot seat
- JT3

[JohnW22]

The two coaches I'm not sold on yet is Holtman and Willard but that's just my opinion.

How are you not sold on Holtmann? Third year in a row his team dips into the Top 25. On his way to another Tournament bid with potentially zero pro prospects (Kelan might make it into the league). All of the Stevens leftovers are gone, and he might have his best team (You could make an argument that Stevens recruited Chrabascz blah blah blah).

What else does he have to do?

To start off I should put so far this season I'm really impressed with Holtmann so far this year but remember last season where Butler was ranked 9th before Big East play and towards the end of the season Butler fans were worried about making the tournament...obviously Butler made it in easily but I'm just saying how far they fell from last year. If this Butler team makes the tournament or even stays in the top 25 this year(which so far all signs are pointing to) it will 100% change my opinion on Holtmann. As of now his first season as coach he did what was expected in my opinion but I think looked better than expected because expectations were so low from other people in the Big East. I think last year was considered a disappointment because that team was much better than the nine seed they got. I might just be low on him because I'm usually high on Butler's roster(this being my first time I'm not in a while excluding Miller's season). So far this season I'm high on Holtmann but like I said things can change. I hope that clears my opinion up.

[stever20]

The two coaches I'm not sold on yet is Holtman and Willard but that's just my opinion.

How are you not sold on Holtmann? Third year in a row his team dips into the Top 25. On his way to another Tournament bid with potentially zero pro prospects (Kelan might make it into the league). All of the Stevens leftovers are gone, and he might have his best team (You could make an argument that Stevens recruited Chrabascz blah blah blah).

What else does he have to do?

To start off I should put so far this season I'm really impressed with Holtmann so far this year but remember last season where Butler was ranked 9th before Big East play and towards the end of the season Butler fans were worried about making the tournament...obviously Butler made it in easily but I'm just saying how far they fell from last year. If this Butler team makes the tournament or even stays in the top 25 this year(which so far all signs are pointing to) it will 100% change my opinion on Holtmann. As of now his first season as coach he did what was expected in my opinion but I think looked better than expected because expectations were so low from other people in the Big East. I think last year was considered a disappointment because that team was much better than the nine seed they got. I might just be low on him because I'm usually high on Butler's roster(this being my first time I'm not in a while excluding Miller's season). So far this season I'm high on Holtmann but like I said things can change. I hope that clears my opinion up.

I don't think that's fair. Butler went thru more in a period there last year than any program should have to go thru in 10 years. For them to recover from that and finish strong was big IMO.

[milksteak]

As of now his first season as coach he did what was expected in my opinion but I think looked better than expected because expectations were so low from other people in the Big East.

Did you really expect Butler to go 23-11(12-16) in 2014-2015? I'd say 99% of Big East fans didn't. The HLOH collectively picked Butler 9th. The coaches picked Butler 7th. Butler finished tied for second. I have no idea where this narrative that Holtmann "met expectations" that season came from, but it's been present on this board recently.

I would probably label last season a "let down," maybe a "disappointment." I'd have to think about it. They finished tied for 4th, but they were picked 3rd in the preseason by the coaches. HLOH picked them 4th. Stever had his weird poll last year too, and I can't find the results for it.