Scandal Roils Once-Great St. John’s

It can be hard for people on this side of the country to understand what St. John’s basketball once meant in New York City.

“We’re bleeding here,” Lou Carnesecca, the 79-year-old former coach told reporters after St. John’s played Boston College at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. “All of New York City is bleeding.”

The sex scandal that has embarrassed the school -- and reduced the roster to eight players after six were expelled or suspended -- is only the latest blow to the once-great program.

Mike Jarvis was fired as coach in December after a start that included losses to Fairfield and Hofstra, and it only got worse -- with the notable exception of a victory over UCLA.

St. John’s is 5-16 and winless in the Big East Conference, with only four scholarship players and only slight prospects of another victory.

But the record on the court is nothing compared to the conduct off it.

After losing at Pittsburgh on Feb. 4, a group of players went to a strip club and took a woman back to one of the team hotel rooms. She later was arrested on suspicion of falsely accusing them of rape, admitting she made up the story after the players refused to pay her $1,000 for sex, portions of which they recorded on cell phone video.

Starter Grady Reynolds, a player Jarvis previously allowed to remain on the team despite his arrest after he allegedly attacked a female swimmer in a dormitory, was quickly expelled.

Leading scorer Elijah Ingram was permanently suspended from the team and this week withdrew from the university. Starter Abraham Keita, also permanently suspended, was expelled after a hearing Tuesday.

Two other players, Lamont Hamilton and Mohamed Diakite, were in the hotel room but did not participate and are suspended indefinitely. Another, Tyler Jones, who went to the strip club but was not in the hotel room, has been held out two games.

“We’ve taken a hit. We just have to try to learn from it,” said Carnesecca, now a symbol of another era. “That’s why they make erasers, so kids can make up for their mistakes. Unfortunately, some things you can’t erase.”

The glory days of St. John’s date to when the National Invitation Tournament at Madison Square Garden was still bigger than the NCAA tournament.

Later, under Carnesecca, the Hall of Fame coach known for his colorful sweaters, St. John’s reached the 1985 Final Four with a team that had Chris Mullin, Walter Berry and Mark Jackson.

As recently as 1999, the first season under Jarvis, St. John’s reached the Elite Eight.

But Jarvis, who had Ron Artest, Lavor Postell, Bootsy Thornton and Erick Barkley on that team, proved a better bench coach than recruiter.

“He never really understood the value of relationships with local AAU coaches, high school coaches or the media,” said Dick Weiss of the New York Daily News, co-author of several books with Dick Vitale and Rick Pitino.

Jarvis did recruit East St. Louis high school phenom Darius Miles to St. John’s, but Miles went straight to the NBA.

Such New York area players as Connecticut’s Charlie Villanueva and Ben Gordon and Pittsburgh’s Carl Krauser went elsewhere, and the current New York star, Sebastian Telfair, has signed with Louisville.

Jarvis increasingly turned to junior college players, and, it’s clear enough now, players of questionable character. (In another incident, guard Willie Shaw was dismissed from the team earlier this season after he was arrested on suspicion of marijuana possession with former player Marcus Hatten.)

Predictably, after the scandal, the blame game is on.

School President Rev. Donald J. Harrington, absolved interim Coach Kevin Clark, saying he held the players responsible for their conduct while taking a not-so-subtle swipe at Jarvis, the Daily News reported.

“Cultures develop on a team -- and I’m not talking about ethnic or religious culture -- it’s the way people interact and what they think is acceptable or not acceptable,” Harrington said. “A coach shapes the culture of the team.”

Others say Clark, as interim coach, didn’t wield enough authority to enforce a curfew.

In any case, the program is severely damaged, and the pool of prospects for the coaching job probably just got smaller.

“Everyone feels St. John’s is the flagship program in the city,” Weiss said. “People feel if they get the right coach, they can get it back. The problem is, the job just got a lot harder.”

Georgia Tech Coach Paul Hewitt, who grew up on Long Island, already has indicated he wasn’t interested, and it’s clear enough why.

Manhattan Coach Bobby Gonzalez has been successful, but he might not be the pick. Jackson might have appeal because of his ties to the school and NBA fame, but he has no experience. Another name floated is Matt Doherty, the former North Carolina coach who grew up on Long Island.

But as much as the scandal has stirred those in the city with deep-rooted ties to St. John’s basketball, the crowd at the Garden on Sunday was only 7,453, and the Johnnies’ Alumni Hall was not selling out even before the scandal.

“Who’s going to remember what the score was today?” Carnesecca asked rhetorically after the 89-61 loss to Boston College. “Unfortunately, people will remember the wounds.

“That will be hard to heal.”

Switching Schools

Transfers often are considered poor risks, but there are notable instances where coaches have had great success with them.

Bob Knight, who once eschewed junior college players, won his last NCAA title at Indiana in 1987 with a team that included junior college transfers Dean Garrett and Keith Smart, who made the winning shot against Syracuse.

Knight has used junior college transfers to quickly raise the Texas Tech program to the top-25 level as well.

Another case is at Oklahoma State, where Coach Eddie Sutton’s 10th-ranked Cowboys are 18-2 and handed Kansas an 80-60 loss Monday, the Jayhawks’ worst in three years.

Four of Oklahoma State’s starters are transfers.

One is a junior college transfer, guard Tony Allen. More unusual, three are transfers from four-year schools. Point guard John Lucas transferred from Baylor when the NCAA waived transfer regulations following the death of Patrick Dennehy last summer.

Forward Joey Graham started his career at Central Florida and guard Daniel Bobik played at Brigham Young.

None is a bigger hit than Lucas, the son of the former NBA player and coach of the same name.

Lucas is averaging almost 18 points in Big 12 games, second only to Texas Tech’s Andre Emmett, and has had as many as 13 assists in a game. He also made the national highlight shows with a midcourt heave against Arkansas just before halftime.

“We had a chance to observe him and compete against him for two years at Baylor and obviously knew his dad and how hard John worked in the summer,” said Oklahoma State assistant James Dickey, a former Texas Tech coach who also tried to recruit Lucas to Lubbock.

As for the other four-year transfers, there is a little bit of logic involved.

“Coach [Sutton] always had a great philosophy that when a player transfers, they know it’s a second opportunity and it could be their last opportunity,” Dickey said.

“I think another thing is transfers get to be in your system for a year [before playing] and practice and understand the system and what the coach wants.”

The State of Arizona

Stanford and Arizona have been presumed to be the top two teams in the Pacific 10.

But at the moment, No. 16 Arizona is tied for fourth place with UCLA with a 6-5 conference record -- trailing not only Stanford but also California and Oregon after losing to Stanford on Nick Robinson’s desperation heave.

“The biggest single problem we’re having is that defensively we’re not getting the job done at all positions,” Coach Lute Olson said, putting the responsibility on the Wildcats’ sophomores and freshmen.

“We’re just not a good defensive ballclub yet and that’s frustrating because we have the ability. We’re not mentally tough enough.”