Time to talk St. John’s with Pico Dulce of The East Coast Bias. You can find my answers to his questions here. This is what I had to ask him.

1. It seems once again that St. John’s lacks the offensive production and efficiency to stay in games. The ‘Nova game saw them with their highest scoring outputs in the Big East but shoot less than 40% (and an eFG% of 44.3) and lost. For the season, their eFG% is around 47%. Is that the biggest issue with St.John’s this year? Why? If not, what is the biggest problem?

Yes, and no.  The team’s effective field goal percentage – or their ability to shoot in general – has been very weak with this coaching staff.  But the problems of the season are long-running problems; and while the team thought that perhaps they had turned a corner in the out of conference games.  But even with Dwight Hardy, the offensive attack is inefficient.  And it’s not that it’s always inefficient; it’s that the team finds itself in scoring lulls.  The offense – or the players – are not good enough to score at a high level all game against elite opponents; it would help if they could finish tip-ins and layup attempts.  But with the offense that they have, the team would need to be incredible in field goal defense or force a lot of turnovers. Or draw a lot of fouls.  But the field goal shooting has been poor for years.

2. St. John’s plays a lot of players. It looks like 11 players are seeing 10 minutes or more. Exactly what is the rotation plan with St. John’s? Is there one? I realize Mason has only recently returned from injury, but it seems that St. John’s hasn’t figured it out.

P-lan?  What is this plan you speak of?  The staff would like to be able to run players on and off the floor to keep them fresh for pressure defense.  But the team doesn’t trap well, and the pressure is token pressure.  The lineups often reflect their opponent’s plans, not what St. John’s likes to do; many will ask why Dwight Hardy doesn’t start or get more minutes, since he’s the team’s most electrifying shot-taker.  But there’s not much of a plan.

The starting five doesn’t score much; then Hardy and Brownlee come in, Brownlee takes a bad three point attempt and Hardy scores a bunch. Then he’s taken out.  Malik Stith comes in, shows a little improvement, and is benched for the other Malik.  DJ Kennedy enjoys a long chat with fans, Justin Burrell comes in, makes some nice moves (but doesn’t rebound) and sits back down.

More seriously – the idea is to bring waves of players off of the bench to keep them fresh.  Now that Omari Lawrence is looking a little more like a player, expect to see everyone besides Rob Thomas log minutes.  No one knows quite where Mason will fit in – I assumed he’d take Paris Horne’s starting job – but the rotation is, again, dependent on the opponent.

3. Is this it for Norm Roberts? I mean, his demise has been predicted for a couple years now. The injuries. The rebuilding. The young team. All those excuses seem to be out, but the Red Storm still seem to be much the same as previous seasons.

You can’t predict a demise if the powers in control won’t play.  While other schools may decide to have a quick trigger, St. John’s has given Roberts a number of chances, because he’s gone about building a program the “right way” – scandal-free, decent players but not beholden to one AAU team.  He’s gotten a bye for a few years because folks like to consider that the program was in a terrible place when Jarvis left, and thought Norm should have a couple of years to repair relationships and then coach up some solid young kids who aren’t worldbeaters. (If you’re interested, some more on that from my blog here http://wp.me/p9vUp-hL and to a lesser extent here http://wp.me/p9vUp-jw.) But he’s not the kind of coach who can squeeze wins out of lesser talent.

The players are juniors.  I mean, all of them except for 4. Other teams aren’t as “crippled” by injuries as St. John’s has – there has to be talent to allow one or two players to go down.  The player development of big men in particular is damning; and the point guard position’s recruiting is damning as well.  But is this it?  We don’t know what metrics they’re using to evaluate the coach.

I can see how the president (rumor has it he’s the decider) can say “well, his guys are so young.”  But this is the full complement of players, and they’re still -.07 possessions below conference opponents.  If they’re not close to playing opponents even, they won’t be next year, and they will be very bad in 2011 with 9 newcomers.

And then, will St. John’s be able and willing to pay the right money for a good coach?  Or evaluate a coach well?

4. Johnny the Thunderbird? I can’t believe you retired Thunder. And really, what was wrong with that thunderbolt with abs and pecs?

I don’t wanna talk about it!  Ok, I will.  The thunderbolt was a lame costume but in retrospect, I like the realization of part of a “storm”.  No, that’s pretty lame.  I think the horse Thunder was also pretty lame.  But the team is named after a non-existent weather phenomena – St. John’s should have a bizarre mascot!

Thanks to PD for sharing.