all starting with harrison's suspension. lavin's gotta get a hold of this team again or else he risks totally losing control
unraveling...
- Thread starter turbo95sir
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Too late. They have to win Saturday, this will be difficult w/o Harrison, Pointer, and Garrett. Forget the NCAA, NIT might be out of our reach too now.
I think having no senior leadership is coming back to haunt us. Its like the blind leading the blind. At least last year we had a semblance of leadership. This season, while the team's age moved forward, their leadership's age moved backward. I totally overlooked that fact.
Bottom line is that we expected a ton out of this young group, and took for granted the early maturiity that was displayed. Instead of looking at them as an exception to the rule, we looked at their early maturity level as the rule. Now, we're seeing a latent immaturity that seemingly sprang out of nowhere. We are being reminded of what it REALLY means to have a youthful team with youthful leadership.
i dont think that much was expected from this group especially after harkless left early for the nba. who was left? yes we got a decent class, but then 3 players were held out for one reason for another. expectations weren't anything until about two weeks ago and then they went 16-11 with 5 left to go and there was talk about the tournament. no way this team is ready for the NCAA this year.
if d'angelo can get his head screwed back on and can be the leader of this team like he's supposed to be, then yes, watch out for HIGH expectations next year. there are tons of highlights this year for the johnnies up until this week. harrison gets suspended, they lose a game they should have won against the friars, get blown out in the second half @ ND when they were leading in the first half and dom just acts a fool. that's all happened in the past week. they have been in it almost every game this year, despite being undersized with tons of youth. things are looking up, but like i said, lavin has got to get control of his team.
Earning an NCAA berth for any young team that is primarily composed of freshmen & sophomores, with sophomore leadership, is a high expectation. And many people did have those high expectations concerning this squad coming into the season because they thought Sampson was a one-and-done like Harkless. As the season unfolded, that bar was still high b/c we had the best shotblocker in the nation, and the Johnnies record was on track for such. If folks want to abandon their original thoughts from early this season now that it's pretty much over that's different. Hindsight is 20/20.
This post was edited on 3/7 3:44 AM by DHarris3
This post was edited on 3/7 3:44 AM by DHarris3
Not sure what expectations you are speaking about. The official Big East website had St. John's #10 in the preseason rankings. They are currently at ranked #9 (even after the loss to Marquette) at the end of the year. Had they not ended the regular season on such a big losing streak, they would have vastly out played their expectations. So I wouldn't call that high expectations with a bunch of incoming freshman and transfers. Remember they played with 6 deep by the end of the season last year and Moe left for the NBA. That leaves 4 (Greene, Harrison, Garrett, Pointer) b/c Gift was redshirted. That #10 preseason ranking makes sense. You have 4 sophomores plus 6 newcomers. That's a lot of uncertainty.