The bit-by-bit collapse of the once-great Big East basketball Conference will soon mean an end to one of several regularly-scheduled rivalry games like the one enjoyed on Seventh Avenue and 33rd Street Wednesday night.
Rutgers/St. John’s at the Garden. Two schools separated by 50 miles.
The Johnnies start three sophomores and two freshmen. Their coach and supremely successful recruiter Steve Lavin is back for a third season after missing most of last year recovering from treatment for prostate cancer.
Rutgers won a sloppy but exciting contest by a deuce thanks in large part to 12 missed free throws by St. John’s.
Mike Rice (pictured above) is as crazy a basketball coach as you’ll ever witness. He got a wake-up call a few weeks ago when Rutgers banned him from going near the team and campus for two weeks. The Star-Ledger says old video (perhaps supplied by an ex-associate with a grudge) surfaced showing Rice throwing basketballs at his players during practice. Rice missed three games and was docked 50-grand in pay.
You can’t defend a basketball coach who is so nuts he makes his players fear him. But as a fan of hoops, I like watching Rice do his thing. He’s unstable in a way that adds great intensity to the game. Rice’s sport-coat came off soon after the opening tip. Just four minutes and twenty-four seconds in, he flung a player’s warm up suit into the air and had to be restrained and cooled off by an assistant. He stomps and scowls and yells – sometimes to nobody in particular. When it appears he’s about to go over the edge, he catches himself and starts clapping rapidly.
When venom comes out, it’s not directed at the game’s officials or participants. It just comes out.
The only time the guys with whistles seemed bothered by Rice was when he drifted out of the coach’s box so far he was nearly in the center circle.
Rutgers beat St. John’s despite inferior talent. They played a disciplined move-to-the-mark, screen-set offense and tight defense that baited the Johnnies into low-percentage shots. Rice outcoached Lavin. And as you’ll see in the blurry video I shot with my cellphone, he uses his wild-eyed energy to fire up his squad and traveling supporters.
When the game was over, Rice acted like he’d won a post-season tournament game. He pointed to a group of Rutgers boosters in the upper level and gestured for some noise. He walked off the court by himself and pumped his fist. The A-D at Rutgers Tom Pernetti is a smart, young guy with a broadcasting background. The punishment he threw down on Rice came at a delicate time. The program is headed to the Big Ten. Big bucks. Big time.
Rice will win at Rutgers. If only he can contain his wild side and use it as he did at the Garden Wednesday night.
As for Lavin, he’ll be fine in Queens as long as he wants to stay. He’s landing great players from all corners. Gone is Moe Harkless (at least a year too soon) to the NBA but in is another good class of freshmen.
Lavin’s most exciting addition this season is Chris Obekpa. The 6-9 freshman from Nigeria had eleven boards and five blocked shots against Rutgers. He’s a Ben Wallace type defensively and he can run up and down the floor with great speed. Obekpa has 76 blocked shots on the young season. One more swat and he’ll break Walter Berry’s single season record dating to 1998.
Lavin and his coaching staff don’t wear neckties or dress shoes. They’ve gone the casual route since a game on 1-30-11. The look is a show of support for the American Cancer Society. Lavin’s mentor and current assistant Gene Keady has abandoned the comb-over and black hair coloring and looked fantastic as the old man he is.
I bought a ticket at the Garden box office on the way in. I asked for the “cheapest available.” The teller working the booth next to me told a fan that tickets started at $25. But the woman who sold me my ticket punched in some kind of promo code and sold me a seat for $17.50.
Sixteen-ounce plastic cups of Stella were sold for $10.25. I bought one before the game and then got another before slipping into the lower bowl at halftime.
Attendance was 6192.
In case you haven’t heard, The Garden will host NCAA tournament games in 2014 for the first time since 1961. The East regional will play out at a place some said had been off limits to the Big Dance because NYC lacks hotel space. What a ridiculous notion that is. You just hope regular hoops fans can get a fair crack at tickets when they go on sale later this year.
I got my first look at phase two of a three-stage, billion dollar renovation at MSG now that it’s done and I can say without exaggeration that they’ve ruined the place for the rank and file. What once was a great arena for the fan sitting up high is now a place that caters primarily to the suite-goer. Gone is the inner ring that allowed free circulation the full circumference of the building. It’s upper bowl and lower bowl with a new ring of private boxes encircling and enunciating the border between. It might as well be barbed wire.
Rows in the newly redone upper bowl stretch some thirty seats wide. The climb up – or down – is steep and long without the easy in/out of the old layout. The newly-installed seats have enough width but there’s less padding. Most troubling is the reduced space for one’s legs. The seat in front of you feels significantly closer. There are scores of seats in the upper bowl that nobody will want to sit in more than once. That wasn’t the case in the pre-renovation MSG.
The upper bowl now looks much like the one at the Izod Center across the river. To make way for all the new kitchens and couches, MSG has made the once-unique 200/300/400 sections a new ocean of crammed-together chairs with rows that go on forever.
I understand the economics of it but lots of fans are gonna be really pissed when they see what’s happened. I say it again: The Garden has been ruined by this renovation.