Looie & Lapchick: St. John's L-Shaped Legacy

Coaching legends: Lou Carnesecca, was animated on the sidelines, but usually left the court smiling, as did his mentor, Joe Lapchick. (Newsday File Photo, 1992)

By Judy Battista | Staff Writer

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THERE ARE 16 banners hanging from the ceiling of Alumni Hall, colorful silken totems to the glorious moments of St. John's basketball. The NIT titles. The Big East championships. The Final Four appearances.

When coach Fran Fraschilla took the job as St. John's coach before last season, he said it was his mission to restore the tradition of excellence to the storied program he inherited. That program is in its 90th season. The Red Storm - it was, of course, changed from Redmen in 1994 - has had just 11 losing seasons since that inaugural one, when Theodore Roosevelt sat in the White House and St. John's opened the 1907 season with consecutive losses to New York University and Manhattan College. Mark this date: Jan. 3, 1908, St. John's first victory, over Adelphi, 18-17. Entering this season, St. John's had amassed 1,532 wins, fourth in the history of Division I men's basketball, behind only Kentucky, North Carolina and Kansas.

``St. John's always was prominent,'' former coach Lou Carnesecca said. ``We always enjoyed a great reputation. It's not something that's developed overnight. Nobody knew about it, being a typical Vincentian school, we never blew our horn.''

There would have been plenty to toot about. The 1910-11 squad, coached by Claude Allen, the fourth of St. John's 15 coaches, had a 14-0 record and a national championship as declared by the Helms Athletic Foundation. There was no NCAA or NIT then, but that team had just one close game, 25-23, over the University of Pennsylvania.

And you thought it all began with Looie and his sweaters. No, the real wonder years began with a group called the ``Wonder Five'' in 1927. That label stuck with coach Buck Freeman's teams until 1936, when they averaged 20 wins per season against three losses. Then began the modern era that propelled St. John's to the forefront of the game - the arrival in 1936 of coach Joe Lapchick. He and Carnesecca are the faces of St. John's, the intertwined coaches whose stellar careers define the tradition that Fraschilla speaks of today.

Lapchick was quite extraordinary, a player for the original Celtics before he arrived in Queens. He did two stints as coach at St. John's, interrupted by nine years as a pro coach. His college years were dubbed ``the tournament years'' because that is when the NIT and NCAA instituted their postseason tournaments, and St. John's was in more of them than any other team. The first of 41 NIT victories in 26 appearances came in 1939. But the first of five NIT championships did not come until 1943, when St. John's beat Toledo. In 1944, St. John's won again, this time with the added drama of a Lapchick fainting spell in the second half, just when St. John's took the lead.

``I dealt strategy a helluva blow,'' Lapchik said later.

In 1947, Lapchick left to coach the Knicks and Frank McGuire took over. McGuire was to become a Hall of Famer, along with Lapchick, Carnesecca and Harry A. Fisher, a one-year mentor in 1909-10. In 1948, Al McGuire, who went on to be player, coach and television commentator, debuted at St. John's, joining his brother Dick. Under Frank McGuire, St. John's made its first trip to the Final Four, losing to Kansas, 80-63, in the 1952 championship game. Later that year, Frank left for North Carolina and his assistant, Al DeStefano, stepped up. Four years later, Lapchick returned. He guided the Redmen to NIT championships in 1959 and '65, capturing the latter title at Madison Square Garden in his final game at St. John's. The players carried Lapchick off the floor, a testament to how beloved he was by those he taught. In 1975, St. John's honored him further by naming an early-season tournament for him.

``He's probably one of the giants of basketball,'' said Carnesecca, the assistant who replaced Lapchick. ``Besides X's and O's, he had the rare ability to handle diverse personalities and he could have them blend. He only had an eighth-grade education, but he could have been the president of a bank or a big shot on Wall Street because of his common sense.''

The common sense Carnesecca brought to St. John's was simple:

``When I first started,'' said assistant coach Ron Rutledge, now in his 19th year, ``Lou would tell me you don't need a car to recruit. You could get on the subway and get five guys to win the national championship.''

And Carnesecca nearly did. He took over at St. John's in 1965 and left in 1970 to coach the New York Nets. His last game in 1970 was a loss -- to an Al McGuire-coached Marquette team in the NIT. But in 1973, Carnesecca returned and went on to pile up a 526-200 record. A whirling dervish who in the 1980s switched from white shirts and solid ties to colorful sweaters, Carnesecca took a star-studded team - Chris Mullin, Bill Wennington, Walter Berry, Mark Jackson -- to the Final Four in 1985. That season, St. John's briefly had been ranked No. 1, but lost to Georgetown in the NCAA Tournament semifinals.

``I've been here since 1946-47 and going to the Final Four was probably the greatest thrill,'' Carnesecca said. ``I don't think it's bitter at all that we didn't win. It would have just been another wonderful situation. For my ego, it would have been great, but it wouldn't have changed me any. It wouldn't have changed St. John's.''

That, players say, is the true imprint Carnesecca made on St. John's history.

``He was a phenomenal basketball mind and an even better person,'' said Jackson, who again plays with Mullin, this time for the Indiana Pacers. ``If you talked with him for 10 minutes, you felt like you knew him a lifetime. He was warm, gentle, a joy to get to know. He not only produced excellent basketball players, but he produced men out of that program. You talk to guys now on my team, and they don't even know where their college coach is. When you have relationships that surpass the school you go to and what you did there, that's forever.''