It was the calm after the joyous storm, a celebratory day when Chris Mullin was welcomed home at St. John’s and Carnesecca Arena like a conquering hero, with a press conference in front of adoring fans, friends and alumni.
Mullin promised to return the program to its glory days, when he was swishing jump shots and Lou Carnesecca was coaching the Johnnies to the Final Four, by landing the area’s top recruits.
The crowd ate it up, as if each word represented an NCAA Tournament victory.
Finally, after hours of congratulatory handshakes and hugs, a meal at Italian eatery Acquista on Union Turpike with Mullin’s family, Matt Abdelmassih stepped back into reality.
The St. John’s graduate and new assistant coach sat in his Queens hotel room and began writing down the names remaining on the program’s vanquished roster.
There were just five: Forwards Amar Alibegovic, Christian Jones and Chris Obekpa, guards Rysheed Jordan and Felix Balamou. Jordan, who wasn’t even at the introductory press conference, and Obekpa were question marks to return. The other three were, at best, role players last season.
Abdelmassih looked at the piece of paper, slumped back in his chair and took a deep sigh.
“Wow,” he thought. “We have our work cut out for us.”
What followed was a recruiting whirlwind, for Mullin, Abdelmassih and, soon, Barry Rohrssen. He would be added to the staff less than two weeks later, leaving the basketball palace known as Lexington, Ky. — the unofficial home of the one-and-done NBA prospect — to join Mullin, his former Xaverian High School classmate and close friend.
The days began early and the nights never seemed to end, phone calls and text messages, recruiting trips and visits stacked on top of each other. A 12-hour day felt short.
“Eight at night was halftime sometimes,” Rohrssen said. “There were so many phone calls and so many conversations, in some respects it was a blur.”
They needed to get players — good ones — and they needed to get them fast. The result was a nine-man recruiting class put together in four months, a snapshot of what St. John’s fans hope is a future as bright as Mullin’s past.
There are no five-star recruits or McDonald’s All-Americans, but the haul is deep, versatile and full of potential, a mix of talented incoming freshmen, experienced graduate transfers and a few younger transfers. The hope is to be competitive this year, and for the core to be a building block for sustained success.
“It was pretty miraculous how it played out,” Mullin said. “To bring in nine new players, at any level, is unheard of.”
It includes five freshmen: point guards Marcus LoVett Jr. (Chicago) and Federico Mussini (Italy), forward Kassoum Yakwe (Mali by way of Long Island), center Yankuba Sima (Spain) and guard Malik Ellison (Voorhees, NJ); graduate transfers Ron Mvouika (Missouri State) and Durand Johnson (Pittsburgh); JUCO transfer Darien Williams; and Tennessee transfer Tariq Owens.
“It’s almost incomprehensible and it’s also dangerous,” said Rohrssen, the former Manhattan College head coach who is known for his dapper three-piece suits and recruiting prowess. “Unknown. Five kids are freshmen. It’s different from any level they’ve played at before. It’s a big adjustment for kids.
“My feelings are we did the best we could possibly do in the time frame we had in the situation we were given.”
Most of the players were highly sought after. Williams got out of his National Letter of Intent at Iowa State — Abdelmassih’s former school — to join St. John’s. LoVett and Yakwe were four-star recruits considered major additions. The 6-foot-11 Sima is St. John’s best pro prospect in years, according to DraftExpress.com’s Jonathan Givony.
There were a few factors playing in St. John’s favor. Playing time — every recruit’s favorite two words — was readily available. And Mullin’s name still carries a lot of weight, as this class revealed.
From the day he accepted the job, Mullin has been asked frequently how he would deal with the seedy world of recruiting, having to go through the shady adviser types, the AAU coaches and the hangers-on. His response has been the same nearly every time. He has two of the nation’s best recruiters — Mullin gave Abdelmassih and Rohrssen credit for the class, describing his role as “minimal” — and it’s not really new to him, anyway.
NBA free agency isn’t much different, except instead of money being offered, it’s the promise of a bright future. Nothing has surprised him.
“Good preparation [for this],” Mullin said with a smirk. “You see a lot of stuff in the NBA. If you want to see something, go try that. That might open your eyes.”
Mullin insists he doesn’t attempt to sell recruits, or give them a pitch. He offers facts — about St. John’s and about himself. He doesn’t beg; Mullin wants kids who want St. John’s.
“He’s got his own little flavor,” said Nick Irvin, LoVett’s high school and AAU coach. “Laid-back, cool, easy-to-talk-to type of person. He’s just himself.”
A week after Mullin was introduced at St. John’s, he landed his first recruit: Owens, a 6-10 forward who was leaving Tennessee following his freshman year. Minnesota, UCLA, NC State and Marquette were interested, but Owens, who has family in the area, liked the idea of being Mullin’s first recruit and felt wanted. St. John’s was the first school to call when he got his release.
“It starts with you,” Mullin told him during his visit.
Williams was the next domino to fall, a 6-8 stretch power forward. Before Abdelmassih — who looks more like a math teacher than a basketball coach, but is considered a rising star in the industry — accepted the St. John’s job, he informed Williams of his plans. Williams, who has three years of eligibility left, didn’t waste much time, getting out of his letter of intent to Iowa State and following Abdelmassih to Queens.
The most important additions, according to Abdelmassih, were point guards LoVett and Mussini. There would be no true point guard on the roster otherwise, with Jordan opting to seek a professional career amid eligibility concerns. Each was a question mark, recruited by the previous staff.
Graduate assistant Luca Virgilio, a holdover from Steve Lavin’s staff,
bridged the gap with Mussini. Returnee Alibegovic, from Bosnia and friendly with Mussini, helped.
There was the chance Mussini would stay home and sign a professional contract with Reggio Emilia of the Italian League’s first division, but he also wanted the experience of attending college in the United States, and playing in the NCAA Tournament. But playing time was important. Had Jordan not left, sources have said Mussini’s plans would have changed.
LoVett wasn’t worried about such things. Competition, however, was fierce. Hometown program Illinois was seen as a potential destination, as was Kansas. But LoVett, a slick and skilled 6-foot guard, was drawn to New York City and playing at the Garden. His nickname, after all, is “Bright Lights.”
“There was no other school involved that had the ability to sell that to him,” Abdelmassih said.
If LoVett and Mussini were the most important, Yakwe can be considered the missing piece, an active and athletic rim-protecting forward who could form a dynamic 1-2 punch with Sima in the paint. As was the case with Williams, Abdelmassih’s work at Iowa State paid off. He recruited Yakwe diligently from the time he was a freshman, and now instead of being halfway across the country, he was a short drive away. Playing for a Hall of Famer like Mullin, who illustrated how he would develop him on his official visit, made it a “no-brainer to go to St. John’s,” a source close to Yakwe said.
Most players, Mullin said, aren’t familiar with his playing accomplishments. Nobody cares about yesterday, he likes to say. Ellison, a student of the game like his dad, former NBA player Pervis Ellison, was different. His eyes lit up when his father told him Mullin was interested.
“He can shoot the s–t out of it,” Malik told his dad. “I’m going to beat him in a shooting contest.”
“I tried to warn him,” Pervis cracked, recalling the conversation.
Mullin, in fact, has yet to lose to any of his new players.
“Maybe I’ll lose on purpose to make me feel better,” he joked.
It was a natural fit, Ellison and St. John’s. He was still available because he missed the entire summer with a serious leg injury and the start of his senior year. Rutgers and coach Eddie Jordan were considered the favorite at the time — Jordan and Pervis Ellison have been friends for years — but the lure of playing at the Garden for Mullin won out. In fact, Mullin was the only reason Pervis took Abdelmassih’s call, he said.
“If this was boxing, they were a serious contender, because of Coach Mullin,” Pervis said.
It wasn’t all a smashing success. St. John’s missed out on some of its top targets — McDonald’s All-American Cheick Diallo (Kansas), top-50 guard Brandon Sampson (LSU), who verbally committed to the program when Lavin was still the coach, and four-star wing Maverick Rowan (NC State), the son of Ron Rowan, Mullin’s former St. John’s teammate.
Mullin’s reaction was the same each time.
“We’re going to the next one,” he would say.
Very often, “the next one” wound up at St. John’s.
Shortly after losing out on Sampson, St. John’s picked up a comparable player in Ellison. Following the Rowan disappointment, the Johnnies snagged Yakwe.
“Any time you lose a kid, I think it bothers you,” Abdelmassih said. “But it’s about how you rebound off of that, when you lose a kid by getting another one. That’s what we’ve shown.”
The recruits who pick St. John’s don’t get a huge reaction from Mullin. He’s excited, of course, but the moment a player says he wants to be a part of the program, Mullin said his focus immediately turns to the immediate future.
“You’re happy, it’s a great feeling, but right away I think you flip to, ‘What do we need to do to make this kid successful?’ ” Mullin said.
Jordan and Obekpa likely would have been preseason first-team All-Big East selections and potential NBA draft picks. They had experience on their side. But Jordan wouldn’t have been eligible for the first semester because of academic problems and Obekpa, after initially being on board, opted to transfer to UNLV. Neither was comfortable in Mullin’s demanding and rigorous schedule for his players where discipline and accountability — not talent — is valued first.
“There’s a reason it went that way,” Mullin said, taking the high road.
Basketball is the fun part, Mullin likes to say. It was that way when he played, that way when he was an NBA executive, and remains that way now.
Mullin has no idea what this season will produce, no clue how his new players will mesh with one another. He said he likes what he sees so far in a few workouts, feels the newcomers have bonded well with the few returnees. He wants to get two quality months of work in before the season begins in early November, wants everyone to be on the same page and get in tip-top condition.
“Now we got to figure out, can we win some games with them?” Mullin said, smiling at the challenge ahead of him. “That’s the next step.”