Across social media Tuesday night, St. John’s was the butt of jokes. Optimism among the fan base has faded, replaced by doom. The hope this season would be a step toward relevance instead has turned decidedly sour as December begins.
But that negativity hasn’t invaded the St. John’s locker room yet. And it certainly hasn’t entered coach Chris Mullin’s mind.
“If you’re looking for panic, you’re looking in the wrong place,” he said in a phone interview Thursday, before his team boarded a flight to New Orleans for a road game Friday at Tulane. “I’ve got total confidence we’ll turn it around.”
Mullin understands the backlash. After all, St. John’s (2-5) has lost five straight games coming off last season’s dismal eight-win campaign and just dropped a home contest to Delaware State, which entered the contest rated as the 11th-worst team in the country, according to the advanced analytics site Kenpom.com, and had lost 20 straight games to Division I opponents. This came on the heels of an 0-3 trip to the Bahamas — losses to Michigan State, VCU and Old Dominion at the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament — and a road setback to Big Ten punching bag Minnesota.
But Mullin also believes in what his eyes tell him: that the roster is deep and skilled, that he has winning players. The reality, however, is eight of their 10 rotation players are freshmen and sophomores. His three most skilled players — freshmen guards Marcus LoVett Jr. and Shamorie Ponds and junior college transfer Bashir Ahmed — now have played a combined 21 Division I games.
When times have gotten tough, his players have tried to do it on their own, attempted to hit the home run, so to speak, instead of sticking with the plan. Case in point: St. John’s attempted 37 3-pointers in the loss to Delaware State.
“They’re coming from the right place. They just don’t have the experience to fall back upon,” Mullin said. “This is what makes you get better. You’d love to do it in a win, but when you lose, it gets a little more accentuated. I think we have a nice, talented group. They want to play the right way, and I think this is a natural process that teams go through.”
St. John’s still is struggling to put complete games together. If the offense is clicking, the defense is struggling. When the defense performs well, the Johnnies don’t rebound enough or shots don’t fall.
“Each game something [different] has popped up,” Mullin said.
Mullin isn’t on social media and he doesn’t read message boards — “The benefit of being 53,” he joked — so he is unaware of some of the over-the-top criticism. He is more focused on righting the ship than any negativity coming his way. His players, though, hear it. One of them, LoVett, went on Twitter and accepted blame for the last loss, tweeting he needed to do more as a leader.
“I feel that I can do much more,” LoVett said. “I could’ve said something or given [us] more energy. We just have to come back and work hard, harder than ever really. Forget about that game. Flush it out of our minds.”
Mullin admitted the trip to the Bahamas probably wasn’t the right thing for a young team that needs to build confidence, not lose it. But the tournament was in place well ahead of the roster’s formulation. Now, it is on them to stop the bleeding.