St. Johns

[MsProudSooner]

Most of the people who post on this board may be too young to remember when St. Johns was a basketball powerhouse. Doug Gottleib told an interesting story today about how they became a powerhouse and why they aren't any more.

As you probably know, St. Johns is in New York City. Back in the day, St. Johns had no dormitories. Because of this, the NCAA took the average monthly cost of room and board in a 5 mile radius of the St. John's campus and St. John's was allowed to pay their players this amount each month they were in school. Sounds reasonable. The St. Johns coach wasn't born yesterday and he realized that if he recruited NYC kids, they could live at home, ride the subway to school and pocket the room and board money. Therefore, he got the pick of the NCY basketball players and they pocketed $36K a year. That was a whole lot of money in the 1960's.

What caused St. Johns to lose their edge in recruiting NYC players? St. Johns built dormitories! End of gravy train. End of St. Johns dominance.

 

[coolm]

I didnt know that!

Poor Johnnies. I was never a Carnesseca fan but I havent known them to be worth a flip since he was there.

 

[Seymore Cox]

I heard Gottlieb saying that. He also touched on something about NY talent. I you look at innercity NY, the talent is not near what it use to be. Alot of this is due to prep schools. If you look at Lance Stephenson, he was touted as the best player from NY in years and he's just been slightly above average.

 

[OUguy11]

I heard Gottlieb saying that. He also touched on something about NY talent. I you look at innercity NY, the talent is not near what it use to be. Alot of this is due to prep schools. If you look at Lance Stephenson, he was touted as the best player from NY in years and he's just been slightly above average.

Sorry but Lance Stephenson has been a really good player on a fairly average team. He single handedly kept them close in many games. He would start for just about every team in the country.

 

[sheepdogs]

Lou Carnesecca retired.

 

[boomerbaby]

Most of the people who post on this board may be too young to remember when St. Johns was a basketball powerhouse. Doug Gottleib told an interesting story today about how they became a powerhouse and why they aren't any more.

As you probably know, St. Johns is in New York City. Back in the day, St. Johns had no dormitories. Because of this, the NCAA took the average monthly cost of room and board in a 5 mile radius of the St. John's campus and St. John's was allowed to pay their players this amount each month they were in school. Sounds reasonable. The St. Johns coach wasn't born yesterday and he realized that if he recruited NYC kids, they could live at home, ride the subway to school and pocket the room and board money. Therefore, he got the pick of the NCY basketball players and they pocketed $36K a year. That was a whole lot of money in the 1960's.

What caused St. Johns to lose their edge in recruiting NYC players? St. Johns built dormitories! End of gravy train. End of St. Johns dominance.

Interesting story!! Thanks for sharing....

 

[BlackwellSooner]

I remember when St John's was an annual power in college basketball. I also remember when NYC used to supply a LOT of outstanding basketball talent.

One name comes to mind: Lew Alcindor from Power HS, NYC. He did pretty well at UCLA under a different name: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

I didn't know the bit about the dormitories. Nice bit of trivia, thanks, Ms Proud...

 

[HeismanWatch]

How can a city that HUGE not have the talent base it should his strange really?

Drop outs is a huge problem in the area, I'm sure.

 

[sanguinetti]

SJU had some decent teams with Mike Jarvis. Turns out Jarvis was a cheater....but for a time he had his pick of jobs at the next level.