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View Full Version : Why aren't we playing St. John's this year?



scottdude8
01-06-2013, 12:28 PM
If I'm not mistaken we had played them for something like 18 straight years, one of the longest non-conference streaks. Any idea why it ended this year? Or am I completely misremembering?

Class of '94
01-06-2013, 12:47 PM
If I'm not mistaken we had played them for something like 18 straight years, one of the longest non-conference streaks. Any idea why it ended this year? Or am I completely misremembering?

I believe this series is a casualty of the move to an 18-game conference schedule for this season and beyond. A poster with more knowledge may have a better answer.

nyesq83
01-06-2013, 12:48 PM
1. They got tired of losing.

2. We ran out of non-con games to schedule.

3. With trips to MSG for pre-season tourneys or NJ-Izod Center for marquee match-ups, as a bone to throw to NY area alums, it became superfluous.

JMOO

Edouble
01-06-2013, 01:17 PM
If I'm not mistaken we had played them for something like 18 straight years, one of the longest non-conference streaks. Any idea why it ended this year? Or am I completely misremembering?

I don't think it has been quite that long.

We initially added them as a replacement for UCLA, in 98-99 when Steve Lavin didn't want to continue the alternating home and away series after taking over the program from Jim Harrick. So... a 14 year series?

Bob Green
01-06-2013, 01:36 PM
1. They got tired of losing.

1. 1/30/2011: St. John's won by 15 points.
2. The last non-conference team to win in Cameron Indoor Stadium was St. John's.

IMO, the 18 game conference schedule is the reason.

dcdevil2009
01-06-2013, 01:41 PM
I don't think it has been quite that long.

We initially added them as a replacement for UCLA, in 98-99 when Steve Lavin didn't want to continue the alternating home and away series after taking over the program from Jim Harrick. So... a 14 year series?

Interesting. Any idea whether there's a Steve Lavin v. Duke/K reason behind it or Lavin just having a different (similar?) scheduling philosophy that doesn't see the benefit of a true road game against a potential tournament foe?

Jderf
01-06-2013, 01:50 PM
So does this mean Lavin is just hopping from job to job around the country trying to break off all of Duke's traditional scheduling partners?

Edouble
01-06-2013, 02:37 PM
Interesting. Any idea whether there's a Steve Lavin v. Duke/K reason behind it or Lavin just having a different (similar?) scheduling philosophy that doesn't see the benefit of a true road game against a potential tournament foe?

I had a few friends that were basketball fans on the West coast when Lavin took over. They said that the word on the street was that Lavin didn't like Duke's west coast recruiting targets, eg Baron Davis, Price, Burgess, Langdon, probably many others, and so he did not want to give Duke any edge in their recruitment (beating UCLA?) and was just generally sore over Coach K's ability to pull west coast targets. I don't know how reliable this info. is, but of course there must be some reason why he cancelled the series. I suppose that reason is as good as any...

Three things:

This is just based on my memory of some passing conversations almost 20 years ago.
Lavin's on the East Coast now, so this whole line of reasoning is N/A.
It's entirely possible whatever Lavin's recruiting strategy was back then is entirely different, many years later. I assume he's tapping into the NY talent base at this point.

Kdogg
01-06-2013, 07:39 PM
I had a few friends that were basketball fans on the West coast when Lavin took over. They said that the word on the street was that Lavin didn't like Duke's west coast recruiting targets, eg Baron Davis, Price, Burgess, Langdon, probably many others, and so he did not want to give Duke any edge in their recruitment (beating UCLA?) and was just generally sore over Coach K's ability to pull west coast targets. I don't know how reliable this info. is, but of course there must be some reason why he cancelled the series. I suppose that reason is as good as any...

Three things:

This is just based on my memory of some passing conversations almost 20 years ago.
Lavin's on the East Coast now, so this whole line of reasoning is N/A.
It's entirely possible whatever Lavin's recruiting strategy was back then is entirely different, many years later. I assume he's tapping into the NY talent base at this point.

This is pretty much spot on. It also explains the outcome of the last game in the series: Duke 120, Ucla 84. It's one of the few games where K never eased off the throttle....no stall ball this time. I remember Baron Davis (who's team was down like 30 at the time) mouthing off to Trajan (who had a career night.) Trajan just told him the shut up.

Olympic Fan
01-06-2013, 07:53 PM
Just to be clear, the modern series ran for 14 straight seasons between 1999 (a great overtime game in the Garden) and 2012 (a closer than it should have been Duke win in Cameron). Three of the games were in December -- the rest were usually late January or February games.

Duke and St. John's had met seven times before the recent 14-game every-year schedule, including three times in the NCAA Tournament.

Overall, Duke leads the series 15-6 ... but St. Johns won the first three meetings, so Duke has won 15 of the last 18, including 11 of 14 in the recent series.

As for the cancelation, I realize that the new 18-game ACC schedule convinced Coach K to stop scheduling a late non-conference game. Srill, Duke and St. Johns could have played early. I suspect personalities are involved. Duke started playing the series when Mike Jarvis, a coach K likes and respects, was coaching the Red Storm. I don't think he has the same high regard for Coach Lavin.

nyesq83
01-07-2013, 01:20 AM
1. 1/30/2011: St. John's won by 15 points.
2. The last non-conference team to win in Cameron Indoor Stadium was St. John's.

IMO, the 18 game conference schedule is the reason.

I need to use the emoticons for sarcasm more often. Jeez you guys are merciless. LOL

rhymeswithdreidel
01-07-2013, 09:40 AM
Looks like it began in 1998-99. Most of the time, it was scheduled later on in the conference season, but sometimes it appeared in December.

http://goduke.statsgeek.com/basketball-m/opponents/results.php?oid=99

devilirium
01-07-2013, 09:55 AM
^ I was happy to see this series go away. Granted, the last two years were not " layup" contests. However, for most of those years, it was a hammer meets nail game for the Blue Devils. The game is a casualty of the 18 game series, for sure. Would've loved to pick up Kansas as a replacement, but not meant to be.

BlueandWhite
01-08-2013, 10:27 AM
Just to be clear, the modern series ran for 14 straight seasons between 1999 (a great overtime game in the Garden) and 2012 (a closer than it should have been Duke win in Cameron). Three of the games were in December -- the rest were usually late January or February games.

Duke and St. John's had met seven times before the recent 14-game every-year schedule, including three times in the NCAA Tournament.

Overall, Duke leads the series 15-6 ... but St. Johns won the first three meetings, so Duke has won 15 of the last 18, including 11 of 14 in the recent series.

As for the cancelation, I realize that the new 18-game ACC schedule convinced Coach K to stop scheduling a late non-conference game. Srill, Duke and St. Johns could have played early. I suspect personalities are involved. Duke started playing the series when Mike Jarvis, a coach K likes and respects, was coaching the Red Storm. I don't think he has the same high regard for Coach Lavin.


In "pre-modern" Duke-St. John's match-ups during the 20th Century (I guess I'm "old" now as a Duke grad from the 1980s), the one that stands out, and which was one of Duke's great wins during my time as an undergrad, was our 71-70 victory over St. John's in the 1985 Big Apple NIT semifinals at Madison Square Garden. I don't recall very many details other than the fact that Johnny D. won the game with a late jump shot (maybe at the buzzer?). This was the St. John's team with Chris Mullin and Walter Berry, and which had made the Final Four the previous season - and of course was Coach K's first great team.

Here is a link to a Jim Sumner article from 2008 about the series http://www.dukebasketballreport.com/articles/?p=24437

jimsumner
01-08-2013, 10:51 AM
In "pre-modern" Duke-St. John's match-ups during the 20th Century (I guess I'm "old" now as a Duke grad from the 1980s), the one that stands out, and which was one of Duke's great wins during my time as an undergrad, was our 71-70 victory over St. John's in the 1985 Big Apple NIT semifinals at Madison Square Garden. I don't recall very many details other than the fact that Johnny D. won the game with a late jump shot (maybe at the buzzer?). This was the St. John's team with Chris Mullin and Walter Berry, and which had made the Final Four the previous season - and of course was Coach K's first great team.

Here is a link to a Jim Sumner article from 2008 about the series http://www.dukebasketballreport.com/articles/?p=24437

Mullin was gone by then. He was one year ahead of Dawkins, Alarie, et. al.

What might have been.

But Walter Berry won most of the national POY awards that year. And Mark Jackson was pretty darn good. Bilas was out rehabbing after knee surgery and the game was in NYC. A big win, to be sure.

Rich
01-08-2013, 11:22 AM
In "pre-modern" Duke-St. John's match-ups during the 20th Century (I guess I'm "old" now as a Duke grad from the 1980s), the one that stands out, and which was one of Duke's great wins during my time as an undergrad, was our 71-70 victory over St. John's in the 1985 Big Apple NIT semifinals at Madison Square Garden. I don't recall very many details other than the fact that Johnny D. won the game with a late jump shot (maybe at the buzzer?). This was the St. John's team with Chris Mullin and Walter Berry, and which had made the Final Four the previous season - and of course was Coach K's first great team.

Here is a link to a Jim Sumner article from 2008 about the series http://www.dukebasketballreport.com/articles/?p=24437

I was a Duke undergrad at the time and road-tripped up to see the game. It was a great game in what, I believe, was the inaugural Big Apple NIT. They later changed the name to simply Pre-Season NIT. The second semifinal pitted Kansas vs. Louisville, two teams that would later that season reach the Final Four along with Duke. David Henderson, who startd in place of injured Jay Bilas, was joined on the all-tournament team by Walter Berry of St. John's, who went on to be selected national player of the year, Pervis Ellision of Louisville, who went on to become the first freshman to be selected MVP of the Final Four in 42 years (uggh!), Johnny Dawkins, Ron Kellogg of Kansas, and Billy Thompson of Louisville. There was a lot of talent in those two games.

roywhite
01-08-2013, 11:26 AM
In "pre-modern" Duke-St. John's match-ups during the 20th Century (I guess I'm "old" now as a Duke grad from the 1980s), the one that stands out, and which was one of Duke's great wins during my time as an undergrad, was our 71-70 victory over St. John's in the 1985 Big Apple NIT semifinals at Madison Square Garden. I don't recall very many details other than the fact that Johnny D. won the game with a late jump shot (maybe at the buzzer?). This was the St. John's team with Chris Mullin and Walter Berry, and which had made the Final Four the previous season - and of course was Coach K's first great team.

Here is a link to a Jim Sumner article from 2008 about the series http://www.dukebasketballreport.com/articles/?p=24437


Mullin was gone by then. He was one year ahead of Dawkins, Alarie, et. al.

What might have been.

But Walter Berry won most of the national POY awards that year. And Mark Jackson was pretty darn good. Bilas was out rehabbing after knee surgery and the game was in NYC. A big win, to be sure.

Yeah, saw that game in the Garden. Walter Berry was amazing -- 35 points and 11 rebounds; Johnny D did win it with a jumper in the last few seconds.

http://goduke.statsgeek.com/basketball-m/games/boxscore.php?gameid=19851129

If I recall, David Henderson talked K into trying to check Berry late in the game, and he had some success, or did slightly better than other defenders had to that point.
St. John's has been a good and tough opponent many years -- they usually play a different style than we see in the conference -- seem to feature guys who can penetrate well with the dribble and the defenders have quick hands that lead to strips and steals. Bootsy Thornton had 2 great games vs Duke, and freshman Moe Harkless was excellent last year.