By Anthony Bosco
I think it was Sunday, about 11:59 a.m., about 30 seconds before tip-off. That moment in time can be frozen forever, marked and put in a box for the ages; the low point in the long and storied history of the St. John’s University basketball team.
It had all come down to this. A team of eight, a skeleton crew consisting of four scholarship players, one of whom rarely saw action, and four walk-ons, who had combined for just three points on the season.
How the team got to this state can be a point of contention. Some believe it began more than five years ago when the school hired Mike Jarvis as head coach. Others believe it was when six of the team’s players decided to break curfew to hang out at a strip club just a few hours removed from an embarrassing 20-point televised loss to Pittsburgh.
No matter who gets the blame, and I believe they all should, Sunday afternoon was a new low for a program that in recent years has been the target of NCAA investigations, mired by lackluster play and poor recruiting and the first to fire a coach mid-season in Big East Conference history.
The decline, though, probably started long before this season, currently a 5-15 blot on the otherwise rich and successful tradition of the fifth-winningest program in collegiate history.
As much as I don’t like saying it, Jarvis never seemed to jive with people in these parts. When Fran Fraschilla was let go by the school, lots of names surfaced as possible replacement choices. But Jarvis, who had successful tenures at Boston University and George Washington, seemed to be below the radar — at least mine — when the school announced he would become the 16th head coach in the 96-year history of St. John’s basketball.
It’s easy to look back with skepticism now, but during his first year at St. John’s, coaching a team that was completely assembled by his predecessor, Jarvis seemed as good as advertised, a coach who had never had a losing record at any level.
That year, Ron Artest, Erick Barkley, Lavor Postell, Tyrone Grant and Bootsy Thornton took St. John’s fans further than they had been in 16 years, all the way to the Elite Eight, losing a 77-74 heartbreaker to Ohio State.
That team was phenomenal, certainly the best one I’ve had the opportunity to see up close. That was also as far as Jarvis would ever be able to take St. John’s.
The decline of the program has been more subtle, masked in part by the superb play of a few individuals, most notably Marcus Hatten, who was able to overcome many of the teams’ shortcomings.
For a long time I defended Jarvis and his recruiting practices. I defended him despite that none of his teams seemed to do anything with a standard 2-3 zone. I will never claim to be a basketball expert, but anyone could have picked up on that.
Jarvis proved to be either ignorant of or not impressed by the talent overflowing out of New York City high schools. The rosters of other Big East teams are chock full of players who cut their basketball teeth in the shadow of Alumni Hall, players whose main motivation these days seems to be sticking it to St. John’s for not recruiting them.
I once asked one area high school coach his opinion of Jarvis and I could literally feel the coach recoil over the phone. Having met Jarvis and spent some time in his company, I always found it difficult to understand how the man could foster such vitriol in people, like NRA members discussing U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton. But among local basketball circles, I would seemingly be in the minority.
This failed local connection has certainly been a contributing factor as to why so many talented young ball players chose to play their collegiate ball elsewhere.
Jarvis has been called smug on more than one occasion, and I have seen that side of him, too. But I also think he was always trying his best to win, it’s just that things weren’t working anymore.
Without being able to rely on a star like Hatten this season, Jarvis’ Red Storm was off to its worst start in 82 years, losing to local and supposedly inferior teams such as Fairfield and Hofstra. Then came the news that Willie Shaw was arrested on charges of marijuana possession and subsequently kicked off the team.
Everyone seemed to think Jarvis had to go eventually, but everyone seemed just as shocked when the team actually pulled the trigger and fired Jarvis on Dec. 19, turning the club over to interim coach Kevin Clark for the duration.
The team had lost eight of its last nine games when Grady Reynolds, Elijah Ingram, Abe Keita, Lamont Hamilton, Mohammed Diakite and Tyler Jones snuck out of their hotel to go to a strip club.
A few false allegations later and Grady is gone, followed by Elijah and Abe. The three others have been suspended for one length of time or another.
And then we get to Sunday and Phil Missere, the lucky lottery winner of the four St. John’s walk-ons called on to start against the Boston College Eagles on the legendary hardwood of Madison Square Garden.
It took about a minute or so for Missere to kick off the game’s scoring, the first of his 13 points on the day. And despite everything that has happened, no real coaching prospect lined up and the very strong possibility that the team will not win a game for the remainder of the season, things at least started to look up.
And that was certainly an improvement.
Reach Sports Editor Anthony Bosco by e-mail at TimesLedger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 130.
