Is it the players?
Is it coaching?
Did everyone overrate this team?
A St. John’s season that was expected to include March Madness has instead been full of disappointing results, questionable decisions and poor finishes. With the return of two of the league’s best players in Julian Champagnie and Posh Alexander, St. John’s was picked to finish fourth in the Big East by the conference’s coaches. Its first NCAA Tournament win in 22 years was thought to be a realistic goal under coach Mike Anderson.
But as the tail end of this dismal season has arrived, the Red Storm aren’t even on the bubble. They are currently in seventh place in the Big East and not even assured of an NIT berth. They don’t have a single conference win over a team above .500 in league play and haven’t won more than two consecutive games since mid-December over Fordham, Monmouth and Colgate. They are 3-5 in games decided by five points or fewer (with wins are over Monmouth, DePaul and Butler), are 3-11 against Quad 1 and 2 opponents and have lost seven home games.
As the playing-out-the-string portion of the regular season has arrived, with only an unlikely Big East Tournament title would elevate St. John’s into the NCAA Tournament, The Post spoke to five coaches (on condition of anonymity) who have faced the Johnnies and three analysts — Jon Rothstein and Steve Lappas of CBS Sports and Nick Bahe of Fox Sports — familiar with the team in an attempt to find out how it all went wrong.
“A lot of people thought there would’ve been a chance for [them to make the NCAA Tournament], and it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen,” Rothstein said.
Coaching
The biggest criticism of Anderson was the unsettled nature of his half-court offense that has hampered St. John’s in many of its close losses. In tight games down the stretch, the pace usually slows down and creates the need to execute in the half-court. That is not this team’s forte. Multiple coaches said St. John’s is the easiest team in the Big East to game plan for on offense because it doesn’t run many set plays and doesn’t have a post player it will go to.
The latest example of the late-game issue was a three-point home loss to Creighton on Wednesday, when St. John’s managed just two points over the final 3:16. In that span, Champagnie and Alexander took just a single shot between them.
“Anyone can shoot the ball at any time,” one of the coaches said. “The best player can potentially not touch the ball at numerous points of the game. … There’s no structure in a lot of things they do [offensively].”
It should be noted that in the final seconds against Creighton, Champagnie got a one-on-one opportunity in the post but passed on the shot.
“Is that coaching?” wondered Bahe. “Your stars have to be stars and they gotta make plays.”
One of the coaches believes the biggest mistake Anderson has made has nothing to do with substitution patterns or in-game adjustments. It was the soft non-conference schedule that included just one team — Kansas — ranked in the top 40 of the NET. St. John’s put itself in a bad position with a non-conference schedule ranked 336th in the country, according to KenPom.com.
“I would’ve scheduled harder,” the coach said. “The one place I would knock them is they didn’t take a bigger risk in their non-conference schedule.”
Anderson’s use of his roster was also questioned, in not pairing the shooting-challenged Alexander enough with a backcourt mate who can stretch the defense and not feeding Fordham transfer big man Joel Soriano more in the paint. One big advantage St. John’s could have with its roster, according to one coach, is a small-ball lineup with sharp-shooting forward Aaron Wheeler at the five. That could open up driving lanes and create mismatches.
“It would make them a lot harder to guard,” the coach said. “They should look at being less traditional with their lineups.”
The roster
Of the five coaches spoken to for this story, four said there isn’t enough talent on the roster to be an upper-echelon Big East team. One felt there are three legitimate Big East-level starters in Champagnie, Alexander and Wheeler. Three of the coaches said the fit for the system isn’t right with a large chunk of the roster. For instance, three of the transfers — Stef Smith of Vermont, Tareq Coburn of Hofstra and Soriano — may be good enough players for the Big East but aren’t the type of athletes needed for the up-tempo, pressing style St. John’s likes to play.
“Look at all of his teams at Arkansas,” one of the coaches said of Anderson. “Those dudes were all long at every position.
“You got to have guys that can [execute the style]. When you’re pressing and you don’t have a human eraser at the back of the press, you’re going to give up layups.”
One of the coaches said if you beat the St. John’s pressure, you not only get open shots but second-chance opportunities, because the Johnnies are scrambling to get into position. They are 295th in the nation in defensive rebounding percentage at 70.6 percent. The press, at times, helps as much as it hurts them. It can produce offense for St. John’s but also transition opportunities for the opposition. It is one of the reasons the Johnnies are 281st in the country in 3-point percentage defense, allowing 35.6 percent.
With that in mind, Anderson has struggled to find the right combinations. He’s still playing new lineups at the end of February. His rotations have been inconsistent. There is a reason for that, however. His best pressing/defensive five is different from his best offensive group. Rutgers transfer Montez Mathis, the team’s starting shooting guard, is one of St. John’s top perimeter defenders, but he struggles offensively as a 22.9 percent 3-point shooter. Smith and Coburn are better scorers, but defending isn’t their strong suit.
“Ideally, you have a combination of guys that allow you to press effectively and speed up the game effectively and score effectively, and for whatever reason, that’s been challenging [to find],” Bahe said. “When you don’t have that, it can be hard.”
It obviously hasn’t helped that the team’s top freshman, guard Rafael Pinzon, has only appeared in nine games due to a finger injury and complications following a bout with COVID-19. He just returned from a two-month absence, and would provide the kind of shotmaking and ball handling the team could clearly use. Wheeler has been two different players: a star in Big East play and an afterthought during the non-conference season. Champagnie and Alexander have been inconsistent in league play, brilliant games followed by shaky ones.
“There’s a lot of heat on Julian and Posh,” said Lappas, the former Villanova coach. “They got burnt with a couple of guys who haven’t been as good as they thought they were going to be. [Anderson] is doing what he can with what he has.”
Consensus
Multiple factors have contributed to this letdown season, the coaches and analysts agree. The additions haven’t quite panned out. Champagnie and Alexander didn’t improve as much as expected. The league got better — with teams such as Providence, Marquette and Creighton passing St. John’s. And Anderson hasn’t maximized his talent, even if the Johnnies have lost just four games by double figures. Champagnie missed the worst loss of the season, at the Garden against ACC doormat Pittsburgh, due to a positive COVID-19 test. Alexander wasn’t available for narrow losses at home to No. 8 Villanova and No. 21 Connecticut following a sprained right ankle.
But everyone has injuries. A large number of programs dealt with COVID-19 issues. St. John’s inability to close out games is ultimately what has prevented it from being in the NCAA Tournament picture. If just a few more winnable games had gone its way and everything would be different.
“I think St. John’s isn’t that far away from having the kind of season that a lot of people thought they may have, but that’s sports,” Bahe said. “It’s a bottom-line business. You either get it done or you don’t.”