THERE were moments last week, inside Madison Square Garden, when if you let your imagination mingle with your memory you could have given yourself quite a basketball gift. Maybe if you were sitting high enough in the Garden – not that you needed to since there were 10,000 empty seats – you could let the uniforms tell the story for you, not the calendar.
Because there was St. John’s in the home whites, playing heroically, erasing a 15-point deficit late in the game, playing with grit and passion. And there was Georgetown, in the road blues, trying to hold off the Johnnies, failing, falling, walking off the court defeated.
The local college basketball anthem sounded almost like a prayer that night: “We are . . . ST. JOHN’S. We are . . . ST JOHN’S.”
Except, eventually, an usher would have had to roust you from your hallucination, would have had to send you toward the subway, would have sprinkled you with the icy revelation that this is 2009 and not 1985, that the teams on the floor were both hovering around .500, both careening toward nowhere.
Or, worse, toward today, when the Red Storm and the Hoyas will meet in the second game of the 15 that will comprise this year’s Big East Megatournament. This is when you would have known you’ve come all the way back around, from No. 1 vs. No. 2 in the nation to No. 12 vs. No. 13 in the league.
This isn’t about Georgetown, though, even if the Hoyas have become the most disappointing team in the country in a year when they’ve beaten both Connecticut and Memphis. Georgetown, for all its ills, remains a Contemporary Program, only two years removed from the Final Four.
No. This is about St. John’s, which in every way imaginable has become a Yesterday Program, which now lives one of those sad college existences not unlike the fraternity president who graduates yet still wants to hang out with his brothers by the keg, welcome more because of who he used to be than who he is.
These are agonizing times for St. John’s fans, most of whom have been faithful and patient during the five years it has taken Norm Roberts to cleanse the stench of the Jarvis Error, five years when the school has built back its soul and reputation but has done little in the way of recapturing its past basketball crediblity. On the one hand, it is always grand to beat the Hoyas. On the other . . .
Well, let one alumnus who has backed the program with both his voice and his checkbook for around 30 years describe it: “If that win keeps us from making a switch, it may be our biggest loss in years.”
And it looks like it will. St. John’s President Donald Harrington has privately told program supporters that calling for Roberts’ dismissal this year will be akin to “beating a dead horse.” Clearly, Harrington and AD Chris Monasch subscribe to the same pie-eyed plan: If you keep Roberts, maybe that ensures Lincoln wunderkind Lance Stephenson makes a cameo by Utopia Parkway. And maybe that means a Carmelo Anthony-style one-year run for the Storm next year.
That’s one way to root, I suppose. But it is worth remembering that Felipe Lopez didn’t exactly save Brian Mahoney’s job way back when, facing similar stakes. And if Harrington and Monasch are really set to give Roberts one more year to earn his job – well, that’s the worst kind of reason to keep a coach. Because what happens if Stephenson leaves, maybe after only one year, and leaves the coach behind him?
If he ever comes in the first place, that is.
The most vocal St. John’s fans are in despair right now, occupying that awful sporting netherworld of being absolutely ambivalent about winning or losing. If Harrington and Monasch truly believe the status quo is the right call, they sure had better be right. Because fans can only be told their opinions don’t count for so long before they take those opinions – and their passions – somewhere else. For good. Forever.