2019 College Basketball Coaching Carousel

Meanwhile, at St. John's:

 

Under the circumstances I don't see how they could have done better

 

The whole St John’s thing is a mess. It appears that the university legal counsel/vp backstabbed Mike Cragg and tried to sabotage the process. This guy was the interim AD. If anybody knows anything more solidly than the third-hand stuff I’m hearing, feel free to elaborate.

 

Anderson was just fired by Arkansas after posting a considerably worse record than Mullin had at SJ this season so it's real hard to argue it's a big upgrade.

But the bottom line is nobody really cares that much about SJ anyway.

 

Whose fortunes have dropped further in the last 25 years, Arkansas or St. John's?

 

Indiana.

 

UNLV

And while UCLA wasn't UCLA any more in the mid 90s, they did have their return to glory in 1995 to indicate they were still contenders. Nothing much lately.

 

Ben Howland had them in three Final Fours not that long ago before he got fired because local AAU coaches didn't like his style of play and were sending recruits elsewhere.

 

"sup?" - Georgetown.

 

Anderson might or might not work. He's been in the south his entire career, so he needs to hire a good NYC recruiter. His style of intense defensive pressure can be completely defused if the refs call a tight game with regard to ticky-tack hand check fouls. NCAA in general is much tighter on that than it was in Anderson's glory days, and it has hurt him.

That said, he can make his system run without elite players as long as he gets players who are willing to play high intensity pressure defense, all out, for eight to ten minutes. He needs eight to ten guys who play a defense that triggers the offense off of steals and turnovers. As he said when he was here, he "can win with Burger King All Americans". What he *has* to have is team buy-in to the concept, because he'll have his guys push extremely hard and then sub four fresh guys in and keep up the pressure.

I guess we'll see how that works at St. Johns.

 

So he basically needs to do what Leonard Hamilton has done pretty successfully as freedom of movement became an emphasis.