BREAKING–The St. John’s men’s basketball program has hired Chris Mullin to fill its coaching vacancy in news that broke mid-afternoon Monday. Roger Rubin of the New York Daily News first broke the news via Twitter.
Chris Mullin will be St. John's next coach. He has accepted the offer. Icon comes home. NYDN exclusive: http://t.co/RA9GZTJqf9.
— Roger Rubin (@RogRubin) March 30, 2015
Mullin, a New York City native who has spent the last number of years living in the San Francisco Bay Area, played at St. John’s from 1981-1985 and left as the school’s all-time leader in points (2,440), a three time Big East Player of the Year and the key piece in leading St. John’s to its last Final Four.
Never having been a head coach before, Mullin is the latest in a trend of boom-or-bust hires by college and professional teams.
St. John’s is coming off a year in which they lost in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, and then parted ways with former coach Steve Lavin after some reports indicated that Lavin might have even been in line for an extension. Lavin went 92-72 with the Red Storm, reaching two NCAA Tournaments.
There is no question that Mullin brings a certain cache to the position that might have been lacking in the prior regime. Mullin is a Hall of Fame inductee, a Brooklyn native and one of the most influential names in basketball today. What that ultimately means to high school recruits that he tries to recruit remains to be seen.
