Think high energy. Think of a grinder. Think of someone who will tirelessly work to return St. John’s to national relevance.
Those are the characteristics that Fran Fraschilla believes his old school should identify if it chooses to part ways with coach Mike Anderson, as is expected.
“It would take somebody with incredible energy. I would say a younger guy that maybe is on his way up and let them grind away,” Fraschilla told The Post in a phone interview on the eve of the eighth-seeded Red Storm’s opening-round Big East Tournament game against No. 9 Butler at the Garden on Wednesday. “You need incredible energy at that place and a guy that’s just not going to take no for an answer. Somebody that they’re going to be willing to allow to grow and build a program.”
Fraschilla, a college basketball and NBA draft analyst for ESPN, wanted to be clear that he wasn’t advocating for Anderson to lose his job after four seasons.
He didn’t have an opinion on whether St. John’s (17-14) should keep the 63-year-old coach following an eighth-place finish in the Big East and no NCAA Tournament bids in four years, barring a run to the Big East Tournament crown.
But if St. John’s decides to make a change, he believes it should go the route that Providence took when it hired Ed Cooley in 2011.
Under Cooley, who was hired by current St. John’s president, Rev. Brian Shanley, Providence has reached the NCAA Tournament six times since 2014 and is a projected at-large team this year, after advancing to the Sweet 16 last March.
A few years ago, Providence built a state-of-the-art practice facility that is as up-to-date as any in the nation.
“[Shanley] hired a guy that wanted to be there and was young enough that he had incredible energy,” Fraschilla said, referring to the hiring of Cooley. “Ed came from Fairfield. It’s not like he came from Notre Dame or North Carolina.”
After a strong tenure at Manhattan, the 64-year-old Fraschilla spent two years as St. John’s coach, reaching the 1998 NCAA Tournament.
He recruited the bulk of the 1999 Elite Eight team that Mike Jarvis inherited when Fraschilla left for the job at New Mexico.
St. John’s really hasn’t been the same since. It last reached the main draw of the NCAA Tournament in 2015.
It last won an NCAA Tournament game in 2000. The Red Storm were expected to compete to reach the dance each of the last two years, but unless they win the Big East Tournament, they won’t have come close.
If St. John’s doesn’t keep Anderson, it will have had three different coaches in an eight-year span.
“Times have changed. When I was coaching in New York in the 1990s, both at Manhattan and St. John’s, the high school talent was still as good as there was in America,” Fraschilla said. “There was enough talent back then, where of the top 10 players in the area, five wanted to stay home and five wanted to get away.
“They wanted to stay home because they wanted to be close to their family, they wanted to play at Madison Square Garden. St. John’s still had a very rich tradition at the time. We were able to really dive into the city’s talent base, in a way that I’m not sure can be done today.”
It clearly hasn’t been done recently.
St. John’s recent history is all the evidence that is needed.
Ultimately, more than a coach, Fraschilla believes a change has to happen in the Queens school’s approach to basketball on a grand scale.
Shanley, it should be noted, has said one of the keys for St. John’s is to improve what he has termed facilities that aren’t up to par with most of the Big East.
“Why does Villanova, Xavier, Dayton, Gonzaga and Creighton get it, and some other Catholic schools don’t? I have always wondered that,” Fraschilla said. “Oftentimes it’s leadership and it’s a commitment to say that we want basketball to be the front porch of the university.
“Not the most important part of the university, but the part that people see first. That was the case for many, many decades, and unfortunately it’s not the case right now. … I just think there has to be more of a commitment to incredible facilities.”
