Writing the Pine

Some thoughts on the Lavin hiring:

• St. John’s is lucky as hell to pick up Lavin.. especially after getting rejected by a vastly inferior coach in Georgia Tech’s Paul Hewitt.

• Lavin is going to be credited when St. John’s makes the NCAA Tournament next season, which isn’t going to be an accurate indicator of how good of a coach he is.  I thought the Johnnies were a season away from a Tournament berth — especially in 2010 with a host of senior starters returning.  So, if the Johnnies happen to make the Tournament next year, I hope everyone keeps it in their pants and reserve their judgment on Lavin until we see 1) the next two recruiting classes, and 2) what he does with those recruits.

• I feel badly for former head coach Norm Roberts.  He definitely deserved the ax, but he was a class act that really built the program from the ground up.  It’s just too bad that he wasn’t exceptionally good at either recruiting or player development.  I wish him the best of luck at his next job — it should be as an assistant coach at a big program or head coach at a mid-major.

• People forget that St. John’s is the 7th winningest program in college basketball history.  That happens when you aren’t relevant for over a decade and a half.  Hopefully things will change with Lavin.

• I graduated from the University of Illinois in 2007 and started attending St. John’s University in 2009.  The connections between the two schools’ basketball programs are starting to get a bit eerie:  Roberts was a Bill Self assistant until Self left for Kansas.  Lavin was an assistant at Purdue under legendary coach Gene Keady, along with current Purdue coach Matt Painter and current Illinois coach Bruce Weber.

• I’m curious to see who Lavin hires for his staff.  He’s going to need guys who can have deep connections into the AAU circuit.  He’s also going to need excellent teachers of the game because player development doesn’t seem to be one of Lavin’s fortes.  I’m also curious to see how much the St. John’s AD is going to micromanage Lavin.  St. John’s needs to protect their image after their legal troubles in the 90’s, but with an experienced guy like Lavin, they need to give some room so the guy could work without people breathing down his neck.

• Lavin was perhaps the most vocal of the ESPN analysts in supporting the Big Ten Conference and speaking favorably of the Fighting Illini.  Illini Nation will surely miss Coach Lavin — the media really is ridiculously biased against the Big Ten.  Maybe it’s because they are bitter at the conference for creating their own network.  But I really can’t understand why the Big Ten is overlooked as a conference every single season.  Being a Big Ten guy in Big East country is perhaps the most frustrating thing during basketball season.  What ticks me off the most is when the top Big Ten teams lose to the middle- and bottom-tiered teams in the conference, they are signs of “parity,” “lack of elite teams” and “weakness at the top.”  When the top Big East teams lose to the middle- and bottom-tiered teams in the conference, it shows “how strong the conference really is.”  Nonsense.