HOUSTON – The one thing Steve Lavin talked about from his first hours on the job at St. John’s is the one thing he could never really accomplish. This was Lavin in December 2010, just a few games under his belt, describing his grandest wish for the Johnnies:
“Anyone can build a team,” he said. “I want to build a program.”
Lavin built a couple of enjoyable teams. He never did build a program, never did lay a blueprint for sustained success, and with the exodus of a senior core – along with the almost-certain departure of sophomore Rysheed Jordan and the unknown status of junior Chris Obekpa – you are staring at a cupboard that’s not only bare, it’s practically an echo chamber.
If Lavin never quite pulled off what he wanted, he did have the right idea. What St. John’s needs, desperately, is to become a program again, to be a consistent presence not only of success but vitality and energy. It needs an architect every bit as much as a basketball coach.
At this time in its history, what it needs is Danny Hurley.
Forget the surname for a moment, forget that his father, Bob, is one of the great basketball coaches ever born, or that his brother was a dynamic player who is quickly becoming his own formidable coaching presence. Danny would bring none of his father’s victories with him, and his brother doesn’t have any eligibility left.
This is what matters: He has a record, at two different places, of halting the negative momentum that losing brings to basketball teams and completely turning that around. Some of the solutions are tiny. Some are massive. All go into putting the bricks and mortar in place toward crafting something that will last. And if his last name were Smith, Jones or O’Malley, that record would speak on its own merits.
Wagner was 5-26 in 2009-10; within two years, the Seahawks were 25-6, and Hurley was imported to Kingston, R.I., to have whack at a Rhode Island team that had fallen into distress at 7-24. The Atlantic 10 is a different monster than the Northeast Conference, nothing is turned around right away, yet in three years the Rams have improved to eight, 14 and this year 23 wins. And are set up to be an upper-division force for years to come.
That is no accident. That speaks to a coach whose knowledge of what qualities allow for sustainable success is the equal of an extraordinarily high basketball IQ. It speaks to someone who spent a couple of years as an assistant at Rutgers early in his career learning exactly how not to run a high-level basketball program, and then spent 10 years coaching at Newark’s St. Benedict’s Prep, learning how things really work on the other side of the recruiting game, learning how to win a lot, too.
And, yes, there is the bloodline. From the cradle he has been involved in one of the great coaching internships available, spending so much time around (and playing for) a Hall of Fame coach, building his own fine playing career at Seton Hall which, if it didn’t necessarily match Bobby’s, was still a 1,000-point career.
There is much talk that the old guard at St. John’s remains fascinated by a return of the crown prince, Chris Mullin, and there is a certain storybook element to the possibility of Mullin coming home to New York to rescue his alma mater that is irresistible. And if Mullin really wants the job, you’d like to think he’s already figured a formula he believes in to make this work.
But the fact is, the last time Mullin was around the college game was 30 years ago. That was still a time when Lou Carnesecca did much of his recruiting with a pocket of subway tokens. That was a Paleozoic era.
Maybe Mullin could energize the New York high school and AAU community that Lavin snubbed and Mike Jarvis before him all but alienated; Hurley would undoubtedly do that. Even if St. John’s isn’t a program that can be sustained exclusively by New York kids anymore, it is one that should be nourished, at least in part, by local resources. Those may not be quite as abundant as when Mullin was at Xaverian and Walter Berry was at Benjamin Franklin, but the gems are still there.
You just have to convince them to be part of something. You have to sell the school, yes, and the team, sure. But also something bigger: a program, a future, a foundation for something unique. What Steve Lavin dreamed of, Danny Hurley can put into practice. It makes too much sense not to do it.