I went back to look at what I wrote last year after the season ended as it did this year when Xavier kicked the shit out of St John’s Thursday afternoon at Madison Square Garden and the similarities are eerie. Last year St John’s beat Georgetown in the 8/9 game Wednesday and got pummeled by the number one seed in the next round, which game I fast forwarded through the last ten minutes of, sober. Uncanny. Other similarities include my disinclination to rehash the game and the appendage of some lame existential ramblings at the end. So at least you have something to look forward to.

Regarding the season, obviously it was a disappointment. It started out well enough – I know it’s hard to remember back that far but St John’s was at one point 10-2, having lost only to Missouri (currently 20-11) and then # 16 Arizona State (also currently 20-11). Fans were checking plane schedules to Charlotte, where St John’s was a projected 10 seed and calling on all the wiles they’d honed coaching third grade girls CYO to devise a scheme to stop Tennessee’s sophomore phenom Grant Williams, Tennessee being St John’s projected first round match up. But then Marcus Lovett got a hang nail or whatever and the losing streak happened and the season imploded. And just when things couldn’t get any blacker, when had all of us given up hope, just when we thought we were out, they pulled us back in, in what might have been the most miraculous week in St John’s basketball history: beating dook at the Garden on national television and number one Villanova on their home floor, ditto. And then, having gotten our hopes up – for an NIT bid at least – they let us down, losing three of their last four, leaving themselves with the impossible task of winning four games in four days in the best college basketball conference tournament in the country, because fuck the ACC. And today we saw how that worked out. So it’s another season down the toilet. I will though say pretty definitively that taking into account the 10-2 start and dook and Villanova and the Butler double overtime game which was maybe the best most exciting St John’s basketball game I’ve ever seen – I mean probably it’s not, but it was pretty good – this has to have been the best worst basketball season of my life. So there’s that.

Before moving onto more important things, just a quick note about the scuffle that allegedly took place after today’s game. This is not the first time Xavier has nearly come to blows with its opponent. In 2011 they were involved in the so called Crosstown Shootout brawl, when Xavier and Cincinnati’s benches emptied and a brawl for the ages ensued. This past December Mick Cronin – and ask yourself how awful someone would have to be to make Mick Cronin look like a sympathetic figure – had to be restrained from attacking JP Mascara – who looks like he should be muzzled like Hannibal Lector, that’s how crazy he seems – who told Cronin several times to fuck off and invited him to suck his cock. And then today. Two things might be a coincidence. Three things is a pattern. And in each of those cases proboscis monkey looking motherfucker Chris Mack

blamed the other guy. If Mack is to believed his delicate charges are angels who play hard nosed basketball and the other guys are thugs: if you want to infer that when he and his fans call the other guys thugs they use that word because it’s impolite to call them niggers, I wouldn’t argue the point. Because you know that’s exactly what they’re thinking. The fact is that today Xavier beat a team comprising inter alia Amar Alibeowitz and a walk on whose name I can’t recall, and if you’re dunking and woofing up 30 against those guys, that belies a dearth of character and humanity and a misunderstanding of sportsmanship and college athletics. Which is not to excuse St John’s: everybody takes a beating every once in a while and it’s good if you can take it like a man. But still: fuck Xavier and fuck Chris Mack. Because karma’s a bitch. They should all die in a plane crash.

Seeing that this is the last recap of the year – and perhaps forever – I thought I’d hand out some season grades. These are on a true curve: someone gets an A and someone gets and F.

PONDS – A: Despite the fact that today he was less a Pond than a puddle, what else am I going to give him? Ponds is preternaturally talented, as good a freshman as ST John’s has had since probably his coach and potentially as good as him and Berry and everyone else all-time if he were to stay four years and I don’t say that lightly. What Ponds doesn’t have – or maybe he does and I don’t see it – is fire in his belly. I recall early in the season there was a quote of his floating around, and I paraphrase because I don’t remember it exactly, but it was to the effect that it doesn’t matter what happens this year because the money will always be there. Which is a troubling mind set. Because that quote reflects complacency and nobody who ever became anybody got to be somebody by being complacent. I kind of wrote it off when I heard it as the immature expression of an immature idea by an immature adult. Unfortunately his early season performance disabused me of that notion: the flick of the wrist 40 foot jump shots and the behind the back no look passes and the rest of the Brooklyn insouciance – all of which is reflected in his stats: 40 percent from the field and 25 percent from three and 3 turnovers a game. He’s too good to have those numbers and he’s too good to not show up like he did today and like he did against Butler in January. I can’t be arsed to look but I don’t remember Chris Mullin ever scoring two points in a game, or Walter Berry. And that’s his head and that’s his heart. That said, if he doesn’t come back next year we’re fucked. Fortunately he’s not an NBA player as currently configured and I expect he will.

SIMON – B PLUS: Simon – 12 points, seven rebounds, five assists and three steals a game – essentially had Dom Pointer’s amazing senior year – 12 points, seven rebounds, three assists, two steals – as a sophomore. If he tightens up his handle and develops a jump shot – and his isn’t pretty, although he’s at 40 percent from three for the season – he’s going to be an All-American in two years and maybe a lottery pick.

CLARK – B: not the player we were hoping for, which was a bruising power forward. Whereas he’s sort of a brobdingnagian three. That said, what he does he does well. He shoots threes at a good clip, has not a bad handle and is explosive going to the basket. He is though suspect on defense and fouls way to much – he averages a foul every ten minutes and fouled out of 10 games – but with natural improvement is on track to have a stellar senior year.

AHMED – B MINUS. Everybody hates Ahmed. I don’t. Everyone hated Jakarr Sampson too. I didn’t. Obviously he’s a flawed player. But his career stats – 12 points, 5 rebounds, 35 % three – match up favorably with any number of favorably regarded St John’s players. Willie Glass averaged 11 and 5; Shelton Jones averaged 11 and 6; Billy Goodwin averaged 13 and 5. The thing that annoyed me most about Ahmed was that he could have been better than he was: there were times that he rebounded as authoritatively as any player St John’s has in recent memory. He just didn’t do it all the time: he could have had ten rebounds a game if he cared to. And of course there was his free throw shooting, which you can’t play his game and miss four of ten free throws. Essentially James Scott lite, but I had a soft spot for James Scott.

 

OWENS – C: beats up on pre season opponents , disappears when it counts. His father might think he should shoot every time he touches the ball but I don’t. Have a fucking milk shake, it won’t kill you.

TRIMBLE – C MINUS: He’s an average freshman and I would have given him a C but for his mouthing off at Mullin last week. Good shooter, tries on defense. My own philosophy about freshmen is that they should be seen and not heard. In a real program he wouldn’t have played. Definitely a keeper and the sort of four year player every program needs.

ALIBAGOITZ – D PLUS: Some wag on a St John’s forum gave Amar a B as a season grade, which unless the B stood for bad I’ll have what he’s having, and that’s on top of what I’ve had. The gem of Steve Lavin’s 2015 recruiting class has had four years to learn how to play basketball and for the most part has not. Yeah he played well the last couple of games and maybe he could have contributed more this season but let’s face it, he stinks: his greatest skill on the basketball court is waving a towel. So in conclusion: on the way out don’t let the door hit you and take the stench of the Lavin years with you.

YAKWE – D: It’s a good thing this blog only goes back a couple of years because I spent a good portion of Yawke’s freshman year raving about his play and his potential and reading today what I wrote then would be embarrassing and I don’t embarrass easily. I don’t know what happened to him and at this point I don’t really care. Clearly he has a foot out the door and the rest of him following that foot would be best for all involved. I still think that in the right environment against lesser competition – a mid major program like Iona for example – he could be a contributor.

LOVETT – F MINUS: I’m currently reading Dante’s Divine Comedy, which I’ve never read – which I mention not because I’m a pretentious fuck, although probably I am – but to make a circuitous point. The Comedy is one of those books that’s considered a classic that almost no one reads, like The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (which is too long), Finnegans Wake (which is gibberish) and the Origin of Species (which is hokey pseudo science, in which Darwin postulates that if the theory of evolution is true – and it isn’t, the theory of evolution is slightly less believable than a literal interpretation of the Bible – that future generations will find evidence of transitional species in the fossil record, of which there isn’t any and what there is is made up). Anyway I found a nice old copy with crazy old William Blake’s illustrations

at a book sale a while ago and it’s been sitting on my shelf forever and I decided this winter to slog my way through it, which I’ve been doing a canto or so a day. (For those of you scoring at home a canto is essentially a long boring poem.) Comedy is Dante’s narration of a guided tour of Hell given to him by the poet Virgil. At the center of hell is Satan – makes sense – and surrounding Beelzebub in concentric circles – each circle corresponding to a deadly sin – are his minions and sinners and the closer they are to him in hell the worse they were on earth. Towards the outside are not so bad deadly self-directed sins – lust, gluttony, wrath – and further down heretics and tyrants and sodomites and sorcerers, all of whom were bad actors whose actions were directed outwards. Nearest Satan are the worst sinners who he reckons were for example Cain, who invented murder when he slew his brother Abel; Judas, who betrayed the Baby Jesus; and the prophet Muhammad, who caused the schism between his followers and the one true god (let me add a hasty allegedly to that, lest I get my head cut off.) Anyway I bring this all up to note that if St John’s had a ninth level of Hell Marcus Lovett would be its newest resident. (Other residents include Mike Jarvis, Chris Obekpa, Abe Keita, and Lou Alcindor. To those of you who are surprised that I don’t have Lavin there, Lavin was merely stupid, needy and incompetent, none of which is a sin.) Because Lovett blew this season up through self interest and greed. I have no problem with a kid doing what’s best for himself but I have absolutely no doubt that Marcus Lovett doesn’t know what’s best for himself and the best proof of that is that he’s having his career managed by Marcus Lovett Sr, a developmentally disabled stage mother with a near moron IQ. No doubt Marcus will go on to a lucrative career playing basketball for money in Europe and god bless him but if I were the general manager of a basketball team and someone came to me and said I have a 6 foot 180 pounds guard with suspect knees who falls over every time he takes a jump shot I’d take a pass, but as I noted last time you’ll never get anywhere underestimating the stupidity of the other guy.

MULLEN MULLIN – C PLUS: It should be a C but it’s Chris Mullin, so I bumped him up half a grade. Obviously the results were not what any of us would have hoped and you are what your record says you are. That aside, he looks active and engaged on the sidelines and he did a good job holding his team together in adverse circumstances – as bad as things got his players never quit on him and he never quit on them. Although he’s been recruiting well and strategy is overrated he probably nonetheless needs to adjust his staff a bit: Matt can’t be the only guy out there recruiting and having no one on the staff with college basketball experience can’t be helpful. Someone like Mark Gottfried, currently floating around the D league might be a good fit. Next year’s a big one. I hope Chris Mullin’s up to it. And because he’s Chris Mullin I’d wouldn’t bet against him. PS, there’s been talk this year about Mullin riding the referees. Today I hear d him say a couple of things I found hilarious: first, when Ahmed was given a foul in the first half that was Trimble’s he said something like you can’t identify the right player because there was no foul in the first place. The other time he was jawing at John Gaffney – who I know it doesn’t seem possible but he makes Pat Driscoll look like Solomon – and he said “If you had a feel for the game it would fucking help. It’d really fucking help.” Which yes it would, absolutely, but maybe that’s not something you want to say to their faces.

So that’s that. We have all of us survived another disappointing college basketball season and are now one more disappointing college basketball season closer to death. (I told my dentist the last time I had my tooth cleaned that according to actuarial tables every time I visit him I’m 2 percent closer to death than I was the last time I saw him and that every time I see him that two percent creeps closer to 5 percent and then soon enough it will be creeping closer to ten. He laughed but the hygienist looked at me weird, but she’s new. She’ll come around eventually, they all do.) I don’t know what the future holds: whether I’ll be alive next year or if so whether I’ll have the energy to do this again and if I have the energy to do this again you’ll have the energy to put up with it. In the meanwhile, enjoy the Kentucky Derby, work on your tan, shoot off some fireworks, and stuff your fat faces with as many lobster rolls as you can washed down with Brooklyn IPAs. I’m out of here. See you in the funny papers.