Mullin & Co. had to sweat for its shot at sweet redemption
BACK in the day, best as Chris Mullin remembers, he went to bed the night of Selection Sunday oblivious to whether his team was in the NCAA Tournament or out, where it was seeded, where it was headed. He remembers 1984 specifically, his junior year, when the Johnnies were 18-11, a bubble team before the term “bubble” was even invented. “I remember waking up and asking someone, ‘Well, do we have practice today?’” Mullin said, laughing Sunday afternoon on the second floor of Bent Hall, a few minutes after his St. John’s team found out it was the 68th team included in the 68-team field. “Once I found out we had practice, I knew we were in the tournament,” he said. “Little different than now.” Now, there had been a torturous 32-minute wait for his team as t he brackets were revealed and the slots dwindled down to a precious few. And it was interesting: One of the criticisms leveled at this team all season was that there were long swatches of games when the John- nies appeared dispassionate and disinterested — a lethal combination for a team built on energy and effort.
But not when the St. John’s-Arizona State pairing was revealed. The roar that followed spilled across the street to Carnesecca Arena. Shamorie Ponds, the team’s best player who had never had reason to watch a selection show before, took in his first and could feel his anxiety rise with every filled bracket line.
“I didn’t know how it worked,” he admitted. “I just kept seeing team names that weren’t ours. I’ve been waiting for a day like this. And then …” Then, they were in. “It was a real cliff-hanger,” said Marvin Clark II, a seasoned expert after spending his first two years playing for NCAA Tournamentregular Michigan State. “But in the end, it paid off.”
In the end, the Red Storm eked into the tournament like a latefor-work banker trying to squeeze into a closing elevator, and all of them would give different words to the exact same quest that awaits them now. Getting in is fine. Getting a win will be better. “It’s fuel to our fire,” said Ponds. It isn’t the first time St. John’s has been in this exact same position, of course. Forty years ago, in the March that forever transformed the sport thanks to Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, the Johnnies were the 40th team invited to a 40-team tournament.
Lou Carnesecca wasn’t home when the call arrived because he figured it would be the NIT calling later on. His daughter had to track him down and deliver the news, and his basketball team followed with its first genuine NCAA run in 27 years, all the way to a two-point loss to Penn in the Elite Eight.
Forty years later, it was Mullin’s daughter, Kiera, who helped keep her father apprised of the constant ebbs and flows of relevant games involving other teams on the NCAA bubble. Mullin himself watched a few with interest — one of them, interestingly, was Arizona State in the Pac-12 semifinals, one of them was that league’s title game between Oregon and Washington, which, when Oregon won, pushed his team’s feet halfway over the NCAA abyss.
“I got lost in Bill Walton,” he said, laughing, referring to the legendary player with his own flair as a broadcaster. “You can never go wrong listening to Bill Walton.”
These will be interesting days for Mullin, who for the first time this season saw the universal adoration that followed his hire four years ago fray even among a few fervent St. John’s loyalists, given the expectations this team generated and the disappointments it piled up. And personally it has been a terrible time for him, seeing his older brother, Roddy, finally lose a long battle with cancer last week.
So if his team has a chance at redemption — and it does — the coach is right there with him. Mullin was happy to learn he would be returning to the NCAAs for the first time in 34 years, but the loud joy of his players that filled the second floor of the business school is what really electrified him.
“We have a chance as a team to do some special things,” he said. “Still.”
They’re in. Now they have to win. They get Arizona State on Wednesday in the First Four with a shot to take on upstate-power Buffalo on Friday as the 11-seed in the West Region. No one will have to tell the players there’s practice on Monday. In their minds, they were already there.