Steve Lavin Will Work Himself To The Bone For St. John’s

↵↵⇥When Mr. Lavin’s new St. John’s business cards came in, the coach wasn’t pleased. The issue: His personal cellphone number had been left off. With the help of a student assistant, he wrote it, by hand, on all 300 of the cards.↵↵If you’ve ever done anything involving pamphlets or flyers, you know how soul-crushing that is. (I’d bet the assistant did at least half of them, though.) Lavin’s also hit the ground running in a half-dozen other ways, including being proactive and approachable within the New York coaching fraternity and yapping so much that he keeps his phone perpetually plugged in and has run through three chargers. He knows that his best asset is his stamina, and he’s going to exhaust it before he gets ousted.↵↵All of this, of course, means nothing if Lavin’s work doesn’t create wins. Diamond Leung can talk about his availability and our Mike DeCourcy can laud Lavin’s maturity, but Lavin now finds himself in a totally different position than he was in at UCLA. St. John’s finished 13th in the Big East last year, and lost in the first round of the NIT. Despite having a slew of returning upperclassmen and a first recruiting coup under his belt, Lavin’s got an uphill road to tread if the Johnnies are going to be nationally relevant again.↵

↵↵Of course, Lavin will probably happily walk up that road, yammering on his iPhone as he stops every three miles to write his number in chalk on the asphalt. But it’ll be his calls from the sideline, and not from the side of the road, that ultimately decide what happens to St. John’s.↵

↵↵(HT: College Basketball Nation.)↵

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