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March 13, 2002
By LORI RILEY, Courant Staff Writer
When Joe Mullaney Jr. was the women's basketball coach at St. John's, he began to recruit Carla Berube. Berube appeared interested in his program.
Then came the death knell.
"One day she said she heard we didn't have dorms," said Mullaney, now an associate head coach at Villanova. "That was true. She said, `Well, that's not what I'm looking for in a college.' That's an answer I would get a lot.
"It was basically a commuter school. For a lot of girls, it's a little different. They aren't going to college to play in the pros. They're going to college for the experience. I played more real estate agent, landlord and mover as much as I was a coach. It was hard to get parents to understand [the housing] was in a good neighborhood and it was pretty decent. That was the difficult part."
Add that the team played in a gym built in 1961, sometimes practiced in an auxiliary gym with no heat and there were no cheerleaders, no band and hardly any fans - it's no wonder St. John's was not at the top of the list of many quality recruits.
Mullaney was able to succeed when he first arrived and won the Big East championship in 1988. But women's basketball began to grow in the Big East, and St. John's did not keep up. For Mullaney, who coached there from 1983 to '96, his program eventually became a tough sell.
St. John's has had two coaches since and not much has changed. The current program is in turmoil. Midway through the season, for unknown reasons, coach Darcel Estep and her top assistant resigned. Second assistant Pechone Stepps took over. St. John's (3-24, 0-16) finished last in the conference. The Red Storm went 8-20 and won three league games under Estep in 2000-01.
Administrators said they are trying to rectify some of the problems. Some improvements have been made the past few years. Dormitories were added to the campus three years ago. Though it may be four years away, arena renovations are in the works. A new coaching staff will be hired.
But issues remain. It has been tough for St. John's to recruit locally, because in the past there haven't been many talented female basketball players in New York. Chamique Holdsclaw and Sue Bird went to nearby Christ the King, but they were two of the best players in the country and headed for stardom at big-time programs. St. John's was not even on their lists.
"We knew about [Holdsclaw] in eighth grade," Mullaney said. "We were basically told in ninth grade that she was above our level. We tried to get involved with her. We sold the whole bit, that we would build the program around her."
A local coach with strong ties to the city could be part of the answer. Former Christ the King coach Vincent Cannizzaro, who coached both Holdsclaw and Bird and is now an assistant at Stony Brook, could be a candidate. So could Boston University coach Margaret McKeon, a New York native who played at St. John's, graduating in 1991. She also coached the New York Liberty Belles AAU team. Or St. John's could go the Temple route - the Owls hired Philadelphia icon Dawn Staley, who didn't have much coaching experience but surrounded herself with people who did. Temple won the Atlantic 10 this season and will play in the NCAA Tournament. But Holdsclaw and Bird aren't going to be ready to coach for a while. Maybe one of the New York Liberty players - Teresa Weatherspoon, for example - would be an option.
As there are no traditional campus pursuits (such as football), Mullaney also had difficulty entertaining recruits on official visits. Mullaney recalled a particular recruit, Sabrina Johnson. UConn associate head coach Chris Dailey, then an assistant at Rutgers, got Johnson to visit Rutgers. Johnson liked the program and its campus, Mullaney said, and ended up in New Jersey.
"We brought her in and there was nothing we could do with her," Mullaney said.
Johnson eventually ended up transferring to St. John's, which is, Mullaney said, how he got many of his better players.
The other route was to go overseas and into junior colleges, which Mullaney began to do in the '90s. Both Charlene Thomas-Swinson, who coached for two years before leaving for an assistant's job with the Orlando Miracle of the WNBA, and Estep continued that tradition. This year's team had three players from Hungary and four junior college players.
"We couldn't get the kids coming out of high school good enough to get us to the middle of the league," Mullaney said. "We started trying to go the foreign route, the [junior college] route, that got mixed together and it wasn't necessarily the best thing. Some of the JUCO kids we got were just not as good."
The program also gets little media attention. In a city with a plethora of professional sports, college women's basketball is near the bottom of the list.
Kathy Meehan played basketball at St. John's. She knows all about the problems. She recently was promoted to associate vice president for athletics and runs day-to-day athletic department operations. Since last July, the department has been restructured and her boss, Dave Wegrzyn, is vice president of institutional advancement. He works with the development of alumni relations, important at a private school. St. John's relies heavily on alumni support for funding, whereas a school like UConn receives state support for athletic projects such as football stadiums.
"It's a different model, but we feel it will work," Meehan said. "Now, if I get an opportunity, I'd like to be able to do this and do that. I'm in better position to affect change."
The school remedied its dorm situation. Now Alumni Hall, which seats 6,008, needs renovations. Meehan said the school is meeting with architects and studying plans.
"It's four years away," she said. "But we have to do it. It was built in 1961 and it needs help."
The possibility of playing at Madison Square Garden, where the men play the bulk of their games, has been raised, but as Meehan said, "First we have to get the product better."
Meehan said St. John's has a good relationship with MSG and eventually would like to put together some sort of challenge tournament, like a Big East/ACC challenge. A game against UConn or Notre Dame or Rutgers potentially could draw well.
Meehan would also like to increase the size of the pep band and cheerleading squad, so both men's and women's games could be covered. Right now, the band and cheerleaders only come to a few women's games. A new marketing person has been hired and will focus on the men's and women's programs.
"The position was there before, but the main focus was on men's basketball," Meehan said. "We're going to have the presentation on the women's side the same as the men's."
The models - UConn, Notre Dame, Boston College, Rutgers - are right there in their own conference. St. John's knows what it has to do and knows it won't be easy. But Meehan wants things to change. That's a start.
"It's frustrating, but we need to be patient and keep plugging away," Meehan said. "It can be done. Geno and Jim [Calhoun] figured out a way. We have to figure out a way."
Note: CTnow.com
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| st. john's: lack of amenities a major recruiting drawback | Login/Create an account | 1 Comment |
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Re: st. john's: lack of amenities a major recruiting drawback
(Score: 1)
by oldfan61 (oldfan61@hotmail.com)
on Mar 24, 2006 - 12:04 PM
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reading this in March of 2006 makes the described situation sound strange and madfe up but that's where we were. It is amazing how far we have come in 3 years.
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