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As a university president with a particular interest in athletics, Rev. Brian J. Shanley wants to see St. John’s basketball regain relevance and national significance.
For that to happen, the Queens school’s new president said one thing is standing in the way, and it isn’t talent, coaching or its athletic leadership.
“The biggest challenge we face is facilities,” Shanley told The Post before St. John’s opened the season against Mississippi Valley State on Tuesday night at Carnesecca Arena.
Shanley comes to St. John’s from Providence, so he knows the Big East landscape. He has seen other schools improve their athletic infrastructure and he knows how important that is.
“We don’t have the state-of-the-art facilities that a lot of the other Big East schools have,” he said. “As you know, there’s kind of an arms race in college basketball. We put up a beautiful practice facility while I was at Providence. I think we need to do something here, and we’re discussing it here. I hope down the road we’re able to get the facilities to where they need to be, because they are not there yet.
“If you walk through what the most recent Big East schools have done, what we have is not close to what they have, and that’s a recruiting issue.”
Building a new on-campus gym to replace archaic Carnesecca Arena doesn’t sound realistic. St. John’s doesn’t have space for it and the Red Storm do play a significant portion of their games at Madison Square Garden, their second home. Renovating Carnesecca Arena at some point is more likely.
But the first order of business, according to Shanley and athletic director Mike Cragg, is improving the day-to-day life of the men’s and women’s basketball teams. That means improving the locker rooms, team rooms, training rooms and weight room, among other things. It could be a basketball-only building that connects with Taffner Field House, where the teams’ practice. St. John’s is in the midst of a four-to-six-month feasibility study to create a men’s and women’s basketball complex.
“Our No. 1 focus is how do we address that with men’s and women’s basketball,” Cragg said. “There is an understanding from the leadership of our university, Rev. Shanley, that we all agree we have to address the day-to-day needs [of our basketball teams] and that’s what’s going to take our program to the next level.”
In recent years, there have been ongoing conversations regarding how many games St. John’s should play at the Garden. This year, the Red Storm will play a non-conference game against Pittsburgh and four Big East contests at MSG, in addition to the Big East Tournament. In time, that could increase.
“Not if, but when the program gets humming, I think we could play more games at the Garden because we would be filling the arena,” said Shanley, who started at St. John’s in February. “Hopefully with our fans, and not with fans who travel with other teams just to go to the Garden. I see the possibility of playing more games at the Garden as something that we can discuss as we become more successful and the fans interest keeps rising.”
Shanley is excited for the coming season, and the sports leadership that is in place at the school. He called head coach Mike Anderson a terrific hire and said he believes Cragg is the athletic director St. John’s has needed for quite some time.
There is significant hype for this season, hope that the Johnnies can win an NCAA Tournament game for the first time since 2000. But Shanley is looking beyond just one breakthrough season.
“I hope we win a national championship while I’m here and I mean that,” he said. “I think that has to be the only goal for St. John’s: To compete for a national championship.”
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