ZOONE Anderson facing uphill battle as new coach in Queens
St. John’s, the ninth winningest program in college basketball history, is back in familiar territory. The school’s men’s basketball team has a new coach, a fresh round of expectations and the aftertaste from the departure of another coach who drove fans bonkers. Two full decades have passed since the Johnnies competed — really competed — at the level their ravenous fanbase craves.
From 1998 to 2000, the Red Storm thundered to 53 wins in two seasons under coach Mike Jarvis. The ’98-’99 Elite Eight team, featuring a tough kid from Queensbridge Houses named Ron Artest, delivered a particular buzz to the Big Apple, kicking the tar out of Big East rivals and nearly topping Duke at Madison Square Garden in an overtime classic.
Those happy times fade further into the yellow pages of history with each disappointing season and each new coaching hire. The latest is Mike Anderson, a stone-jawed Southerner with a winning pedigree and a reputation for getting his players to work like yeomen.
But as St. John’s enters yet another new era, it faces the question of whether it’s even possible to reapply the luster from golden eras past. The world of New York high school basketball has flipped on its head in two decades, and the school itself has morphed too.
All told, the Johnnies haven’t won a game at The Dance since 2000, visiting just four times, including a trip to the play-in games last March.
Mike Cragg, the school’s athletic director, isn’t lowering the bar. “I believe that we can win a national championship here,” Cragg told the Daily News. “And we are a place where kids can live their dreams.”
There’s no doubting the allure of New York or the magic of the Garden. More in doubt: the high school talent pool in the City.
Recruiting analysts say New York has slipped from its once unquestioned position atop the youth basketball world. The Mecca is no longer mecca.
City kids bolt for prep schools. The Catholic schools that produced many of the players that stacked rosters in the old Big East are closing. And other regions have upped their games.
The City “doesn’t produce the amount of talent that it used to,” said Evan Daniels, director of recruiting for the service 247Sports. “Maybe kids are still born in New York City, but they branch off to go other places.”
Daniels put New York in the second tier of prospect hotbeds, below a top class of locales including Washington, Atlanta and Los Angeles. He said he doesn’t think the City is all that close to those regions.
An analysis of the annual top-150 ranking of recruits bears out the regression. From 2003 to 2006, the first four years for which such records are kept, New York produced an average of eight players per year in the T150, according to Rivals, another recruiting service. But from 2007 to 2019, the City churned out an average of fewer than two. Even that precipitous dropoff likely only covers the tip of an iceberg, omitting the ’80s and ’90s, when New York basketball was king.
At the same time that the City has bled basketball talent, St. John’s itself has faced institutional changes that have put up barriers to success on the hardwood.
Back in the aughts, guard Mark Jackson said every baller coming up dreamed of suiting up for the Johnnies. Jackson, a member of the Final Four Red Storm team of 1985, once told New York magazine: “When you play CYO, you’re thinking about St. John’s. Same in high school. When St. John’s is doing good, it gives everyone in the city a lift, because if you’re a player it says something about you, because you’re part of it.”
The equation changed around the turn of the century, but not simply because of transformations on the youth circuit. In 1999, St. John’s started building dorms, reshaping a snug commuter school into a national institution. Between 1999 and 2008, seven residence halls sprouted up on the Queens campus.
“St. John’s was a commuter school back when Mark Jackson was there, so a lot of kids would live at home, and a lot of kids never thought about going