At Seton Hall and St. John's, a tough task ahead

I never hated anyone until my freshman year of college. That’s not to say I never told anyone I hated them; for Christmas one year my sister bought me the wrong miniature wrestling ring and I’m pretty sure I called her some awful names. But Louis Orr was, for sure, the first person I had ever despised. He was the basketball coach at Seton Hall (now at Bowling Green) and what makes this story sad is that Orr didn’t have an ounce of hate in his entire 6’8, 180 pound body. He was the type of guy who quoted the bible the way his players quoted 50 cent.

None of that mattered to me. I was a punk 18 year old who had but three expectations in life: 1) That my embarrassingly fake id would work at Bunny’s in South Orange. 2) That the Nathan’s on campus wouldn’t serve hot dogs that tasted like Newark. 3) That Seton Hall basketball would be the national powerhouse I expected it to be.

And you wonder why I finished school in Providence.

By the time I got to the Hall, the rumors were already flying around campus. Despite winning a game in the NCAA Tournament in 2004, Orr’s days were numbered. He couldn’t recruit New York and north Jersey effectively and alumni and school officials felt the program wasn’t in a position to compete with the upper tier of the Big East. They were right, of course, and we all bought into it. I remember the very first game of the 2004/05 season (a loss to Richmond) and the crowd was already tearing into Orr (and trust me, it wasn’t just the students who smuggled cheap vodka in Gatorade bottles to the Meadowlands that were chanting “Fire Louie”. Orr was let go a year later.

Everyone in the Seton Hall community felt the program deserved better. They still feel that way today. The same goes for most of the other tiny catholic universities that helped to start the Big East. It seems as though anyone involved with the Hall, Providence College or St. John’s wants to jump in their Hot Tub Time Machine and flash back to the days when their school mattered in the nation’s top basketball conference. That’s why every time the head coaching job opens up in South Orange, people want to make P.J. Carlesimo (who led the Pirates to the Final Four when I was 2) the top candidate. In Providence, it’s Rick Pitino. At St. John’s, it’s whoever has the biggest name and the slickest hair cut.

Recently, both Seton Hall and St. John’s were in the news for firing their respective head coaches. At the Hall, Bobby Gonzalez was let go not because he wasn’t the model catholic, but because he wasn’t successful enough to not be the model catholic. The Johnnies got rid of Norm Roberts mainly because he didn’t want to make nice with the sleaze balls that dominate youth basketball in New York City.

Neither school managed to hire their first, second or even third choices.

Seton Hall fans wanted Carlesimo; they got Kevin Willard, a 35 year old who never led his Iona team past the quarterfinals of the MAAC tournament. St. John’s wanted everyone from Billy Donovan to John Calipari (I think they even offered Phil Jackson the job); they settled on Steve Lavin, whose hearing has to be damaged after spending the last seven years working with Dick Vitale at ESPN.

Almost all of the experts seem to agree that even if they weren’t the ideal candidates, Willard and Lavin were both good choices. But what lies ahead might be too difficult for even the craftiest coaches to navigate. They don’t have to change the fans’ perception of each program. They have to change the recruits’.

High school basketball players in the New York City area don’t view Seton Hall or St. John’s as elite programs because, well, they weren’t alive when these schools were relevant in college basketball. Seton Hall simply doesn’t have the facilities to impress recruits and as far as the Johnnies go, is Madison Square Garden honestly a selling point? The New York Liberty has been the winningest team in that building over the last decade.

Look, I’m rooting for both Willard and Lavin. I wouldn’t know but I’m told there’s nothing like successful New York City-area basketball. But I can’t help but remain skeptical.

The times have changed. At Seton Hall and St. John’s, only the coaches have.

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With little pro talent, Final Four might bore us

Here is the one guarantee I can make about the Final Four: Sportswriters will have no trouble meeting deadlines with this group. The storylines are endless. We’ve got the traditional powers in Duke and Michigan State. Three of the best coaches in the history of college basketball will be there – including Bob Huggins looking for his first National Championship. And of course, there’s always Butler’s Cinderella story as it tries to become the first team from a mid-major conference to win it all since UNLV did so two decades ago.

Only one thing will be missing in Indianapolis.

Talent.

For the first time since the inception of the NBA draft lottery, it’s likely that no one playing in the Final Four will be selected in the first 14 picks of June’s draft. In fact, NBAdraft.net projects West Virginia’s Devin Ebanks and Da’Sean Butler to be the only two guys playing in Indianapolis that will be drafted at all. When you combine the lack of NBA prospects and the amount of upsets that took place earlier in the tournament, this might be the most diluted Final Four in the history of college basketball.

So is it worth watching? Well, if you went to Duke, West Virginia, Michigan State or Butler, then sure. But be prepared for what could be the lowest scoring Final Four since the shot clock was implemented 24 years ago. You’ll see three defensive-minded, fundamentally sound games that should all remain close if for no other reason than none of the four teams have a guy who could take over a game and win it by himself. It will be the type of basketball you’ll want your 8 year-old son to pay attention to; but chances are he’ll want to change the channel to watch something with a little faster pace, like that P90X infomercial.

Me? I’ll keep track of the score, but without Kentucky involved, it’s going to be hard to keep me glued to the television. Any John Calipari-led program has replaced Duke as the most polarizing team in college athletics and something is just missing without him. He’s just so easy to root against. And Thursday night’s matchup with Cornell was the closest thing we’ll ever see to the 1980 USSR/USA hockey game. It was pro versus Joes. Future lottery picks and the guys who will represent them in court someday. Only the bad guys, led by Calipari, won.

It’s too bad those NBA-ordered mandatory minimum essentially become contract years for players, because as good as Kentucky was this season, they would have probably advanced further if they could have dropped that “I gotta get mine” mentality. And no matter how you feel about Calipari, the Final Four would be much more exciting with him in it.

Even without Calipari, this week will still be all about the coaches. Krzyzewski, Izzo, Huggins and the new kid on the block, Brad Stevens. College basketball has always been more about the guys who build programs than the kids who play in them. And this year, with the Final Four so big on heart and little on talent, will be no different.

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For the record: My NCAA Picks

My NCAA tournament bracket checklist: 1) Have I left emotion out of it? Yep, Connecticut wasn’t invited to the Big Dance so I’ve got no allegiances. (The same can’t be said for my NIT bracket) 2) Have I been real with myself? Check. I’ve never seen half of these teams play and chances are, even the loudest experts on ESPN have only watched Siena play twice all season. I won’t get sucked into the trendy upset picks. 3) Did I pick the team with most talent to win it all? Absolutely.

Look, I realize you care about my tournament picks about as much as I care about your bad beat stories, but I think I got it this time. Really I do. So sit back and let mine be the 187th tournament preview you read this week.

Big East Beware
Last week, I wrote that I was concerned how difficult the Big East was this season and nothing has changed. Just look at the NIT, where three of the four teams from the conference were eliminated in the opening round against inferior teams. The other, UConn, was down with a minute to go against Northeastern.

The biggest question professional scouts have about college players is how they’ll respond to playing 82 games in a season. A lot of young guys break down because they just can’t handle the beating they take night in and night out. The closest comparison to the NBA in college is the Big East, where an off night against any team in the league will result in a loss. Villanova looked exhausted at the end of the season. Notre Dame was gassed by the end of the conference tournament. And Syracuse is banged up and has lost two straight. West Virginia is the only team I have making it to the regional final, but that’s as far as they’ll go.

The upset that won’t happen
You know why almost every Major League Baseball players spends a few years riding busses in the minor leagues? Because they need to first prove themselves against guys their own age. Then they need to do it against guys just as good as them. And then they need to hold their own against the best of the best. That’s when they make it the show.

Cornell might have the best three-point shooting team in the tournament, but they’re still from the Ivy League and Temple is pissed off about getting no respect. Don’t be surprised if this one is never close and the Owls cruise into the second round.

The 13-16 seed with the best shot to win a game
Sam Houston State, because they can score a ton of points and Baylor is already thinking about a regional final matchup with Duke.

The biggest sleeper
Washington. The Pac 10 champions had one bad month, losing five times in January. After losing at USC on Jan. 23, the Huskies went 12-2 down the stretch and started to look like the team that was considered a Final Four contender at the beginning of the season. This is a team that has a great chance of making a run to the regional finals, especially if I’m right about Big East teams having fatigue problems.

Defense wins championships, but you still need a scorer
Which is why the only teams with a legitimate chance to win a national championship are Kentucky, Kansas, Ohio State and Syracuse. For the record, I do have the Orange going out in the Sweet 16, but that’s because I think they’ll struggle against Vanderbilt, a team that plays a completely different style than anyone in the Big East.

My Final Four
Ohio State over Kansas State
Kentucky over Duke

National Championship
Kentucky 75 -67

Feel free to list your picks in the comments section.

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Goodell should suspend Roethlisberger immediately

This is where I get to write about Ben Roethlisberger, the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback who displays incredible poise in the pocket every Sunday yet allegedly can’t keep his hands in his pockets anytime a young woman comes around.

It’s time to stop tiptoeing around what we don’t know and focus on all that we do know. Of course Big Ben is innocent until proven guilty. But that doesn’t change that he now has more sexual assault accusations than playoff appearances in the last two years and it doesn’t mean NFL commissioner Roger Goodell should take a wait-and-see approach when it comes to taking disciplinary action.

When Goodell chose to suspend Pacman Jones for the entire season three years ago, he talked a lot about how it is a privilege to play in the NFL and said “players, and all members of our league, have to make the right choices and decisions in their conduct on a consistent basis."

In a letter to Jones, he wrote, “Your conduct has brought embarrassment and ridicule upon yourself, your club, and the NFL, and has damaged the reputation of players throughout the league. You have put in jeopardy an otherwise promising NFL career, and have risked both your own safety and the safety of others through your off-field actions. In each of these respects, you have engaged in conduct detrimental to the NFL and failed to live up to the standards expected of NFL players. Taken as a whole, this conduct warrants significant sanction."

Now it’s time for Goodell to be consistent. I’m not someone who necessarily believes the same punishment should apply to everyone every time. If this were Peyton Manning, a guy with an immaculate record off the field, facing similar accusations, then it would be completely okay for the commissioner to wait for more facts to come out before making a decision on whether to take action. But because of Roethlisberger’s previous poor decisions, he has lost the benefit of the doubt.

And don’t think for a second there won’t be plenty of people waiting to pounce on Goodell for suspending a black guy named Pacman even though he had never been convicted of a crime and not taking similar action against Roethlisberger.

Let’s see. Has Roethlisberger put in jeopardy an otherwise promising NFL career? Has he risked his safety and the safety of others? Has he engaged in conduct detrimental to his team and the league? Two sexual assault accusations along with a motorcycle accident that nearly cost him his life and a budding reputation as a guy who likes to party too much suggests the answer is yes.

The trouble with sexual assault allegations is that in the wake of the Duke Lacrosse scandal, no one wants to drag the accused’s name through the mud for fear of a lawsuit and the chance of being disbarred. In Goodell’s case, it’s that he doesn’t want to get it wrong and give the Player’s Association another reason to despise him heading into labor negotiations.

But what we all conveniently tend to forget about the Duke Lacrosse situation is that while those players may have not committed a crime, they also weren’t acting like model citizens that night. At the very least, they verbally abused the stripper who accused them of raping her. And if down the line, if one of them happens to be running a Fortune 500 company and gets accused of sexual misconduct or discrimination, get what’s going to be brought up in court?

Same goes for Roethlisberger, who is at least guilty of putting himself in a bad situation for the second time in less than a year. Goodell gave him a pass the first time he went through this, but there’s no way he can let him go clean this time around.

The commissioner will do whatever he can to protect quarterbacks on the field.

The same shouldn’t apply off of it

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Is the Big East too difficult for its own good?

When the final buzzer sounded at the Dunkin Donuts Center in Providence Saturday night, another wild regular season in the Big East came to an end. The last game of the season didn’t feature two of the league’s elite teams, but there might not be anyone better than Providence College and Seton Hall to give you an idea of just how difficult the conference was this year.

If not for DePaul, the Friars would have finished at the bottom of the Big East. They ended the season having allowed more points-per-game than any team in league history. But they were also the sixth highest scoring team in America, which meant that even for a team that went 4-14 in conference play, they weren’t exactly a pushover. A poor shooting night against Providence and it would feel like you were playing Syracuse or Villanova.

Seton Hall is what Providence wishes it could be. The Pirates finished just outside the top ten nationally in scoring, played a little bit better defense, were slightly deeper and probably caught a few more breaks than the Friars this season. Bobby Gonzalez’s team finished .500 in league play and put itself on the NCAA Tournament bubble by beating all the teams worse than them and very few of the ones better than them. They were the most average team in the most exceptional league in the country.

So if a team who finished in 15th place in the conference could beat you on any given night and a 9-9 team featured the league’s third leading scorer (Jeremy Hazell) and top rebounder (Herb Pope), the teams at the top of the conference must be tailor-made for deep runs in next week’s NCAA Tournament, right?

Right?

The answer might not be as clear as it seems. Yes, Syracuse, the regular season champion, Pittsburgh, West Virginia and Villanova all have the talent to reach the Final Four. But after playing 18 games plus a conference tournament in a league where you rarely ever get a night off, the question is, will anyone have anything left in the tank?

Hours before Seton Hall defeated Providence, the top ranked Orange lost to Louisville for the second time this season. The loss wasn’t all that surprising considering it was senior day for the Cardinals and the last game ever at Freedom Hall. Syracuse also had very little left to play for. They were already guaranteed the top seed in the Big East Tournament and most pundits have penciled them in as a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

None of that stopped Wesley Johnson from playing 38 minutes in the game. The Orange’s best player was among the league’s leaders in minutes played this season despite concerns about a leg injury he suffered against Providence in earl y February. After his minutes were limited in that game and the one that followed, Johnson played at least 36 minutes in each of his team’s final seven games.

The reason for his overuse was simple: Five of those games were against teams likely heading to the NCAA Tournament; another was against UConn, one of Syracuse’s biggest rivals; and the other one was probably the final home game of his career assuming he declares for the NBA Draft after the season.

Johnson isn’t the only player in the Big East who could see the wear and tear of such a treacherous regular season take its toll at the worst possible time. The league saw more players average at least 34 minutes per game than any other conference in the country this season.

The concern will only get worse at the Big East Tournament in Madison Square Garden this week. Barring a major upset, it is conceivable that any team who survives until Thursday’s quarterfinals will be safe on Selection Sunday. That means winning the Big East Championship will take beating three tournament-bound teams in three days. It has the chance to be one of the most exciting and competitive tournaments in league history, but at what cost?

Making it to Saturday could leave teams running on empty come the NCAA tournament.

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