St. John’s beset by roster doubts
At full strength, the St. John’s men’s basketball team is full of question marks. But if the season started today, the Red Storm wouldn’t even be in position to provide answers.
Three key players — transfers Ian Steere and Rasheem Dunn, and sophomore Greg Williams — face uncertain status. Dunn and Steere are waiting to hear from the NCAA on waiver requests for immediate eligibility, while Williams has been slowed by a lower-back problem that has had him sidelined since the fall semester began.
“You got to have Plan A, Plan B, Plan C I guess,” first-year coach Mike Anderson said at St. John’s media day Tuesday. “We just got to get all [our players] prepared, get them ready, to go into battle.”
St. John’s, picked to finish ninth in the Big East by the league’s coaches, is hoping Plan A will be possible when it opens the Anderson era in two weeks against Mercer at Carnesecca Arena. After All-Big East second-team selections LJ Figueroa and Mustapha Heron, the roster is largely unproven — dependent upon transfers new to the Big East and inexperienced underclassmen.
Williams, an athletic guard who saw infrequent minutes as a freshman, did take a step forward Tuesday, participating in the portion of practice open to the media. Steere and Dunn, meanwhile, can only wait for a resolution to their cases.
Paperwork was filed with the NCAA two weeks ago, according to athletic director Mike Cragg. The school communicated with the NCAA throughout the summer about what was needed for each player.
Of the two, Dunn’s waiver is the more important, since Steere won’t be eligible to return until the fall semester ends in mid-December — he transferred to St. John’s midyear from North Carolina State — and would miss the season’s first 11 games. Dunn would have to sit out the entire year if not granted a waiver. The Brooklyn native, who went to high school with former St. John’s star Shamorie Ponds, transferred to Cleveland State following his sophomore year at St.
Francis Brooklyn and sat out last season. His coach, Dennis Felton, was fired in June and he opted to come home.
“We feel confident we’ll know [resolutions to these cases] before the season opener,” Cragg said.
“The possibly of not getting it [is stressful],” Dunn said. “[I’m a] kid who did everything he was supposed to do through his college years, high school years, got good grades.”
Anderson said the two players would be in “the mix” as starters. The 6-foot-2 Dunn averaged 15.4 points per game as a sophomore at St. Francis and could be the answer at point guard as the third scoring option after Heron and Figueroa.
The 6-9, 260-pound Steere is the big body St. John’s has lacked in recent years, athletic and capable of making an impact at both ends of the floor, with the potential to shoot from the perimeter.
St. John’s would be down to nine scholarship players without the duo, making it difficult to play Anderson’s up-tempo pressing style that relies on depth and fresh bodies.