HOUSTON — It is a useful reference point, Dec. 19, 2003, the day St. John’s decided to cleanse its soul, ridding itself of Mike Jarvis. There is no need to detail the fiasco Jarvis’ final years were, or the damage done on his watch. St. John’s lives with those stains every day, still.
That same night, 6,000 miles away, the Baylor Bears descended a few rungs south on their own tour of basketball hell, losing to BYU-Hawaii, and it was harder to tell what was more humiliating: the 72-67 loss, or the fact that the Division II Seasiders had actually selected the Bears, out of the Big 12, to be the first-round opponent in their own holiday tournament.
“We have to take our knocks right now,” the Bears’ first-year coach, Scott Drew, said that night. “I think we’re going to have to accept that right now.”
Baylor was soon nudged to the brink of extinction by the horrific scandal visited upon the school by Drew’s predecessor, Dave Bliss. One player had killed another; Bliss not only tried to cover up the crime, but in so doing cast false aspersion upon the murdered athlete’s character. Compared to that, Jarvis had been running a seminary at St. John’s.
Drew lost 40 of his first 57 games, 28 of his first 32 in the Big 12 . . . and that was before the NCAA came within an eyeblink of delivering the death penalty, settling instead on limiting Baylor’s 2005-06 season to 16 conference games.
“We believed all along that the hard times would make us stronger,” Drew said as his team prepared for today’s South Regional clash with Duke for a slot in the Final Four. “Sometimes people thought we were foolish for believing that. But I think we have shown that perseverance pays off.”
It is impossible to see what Baylor has become — and how quickly — and not be equal parts impressed and skeptical. Bliss had taken a back hoe and tried to bury the program forever. Then Drew showed up from Valparaiso and laid hands on the ashes.
It’s equally difficult to study Baylor’s rise from the dust and not look closely at what’s become of St. John’s since Dec. 19, 2003. The school did much right: It self-reported violations, banned itself from postseason, hired a good man named Norm Roberts to clear away the detritus and restore dignity.
But there is another part of the story.
Roberts tried to elevate St. John’s his way, and that meant conducting business on a higher plane than competing on the major-college level may truly allow. We’ve heard plenty from the AAU masters of New York’s basketball domain that Roberts, frankly, wouldn’t play ball with them. It hurt him at first, may finally have ruined him.
Drew? He looks like an altar boy but is, by acclimation, among the more detested coaches in the Big 12 among his peers. Part of that is jealousy, surely. But part is also an admitted self-confidence that borders on — and occasionally speeds beyond – arrogance. Texas’ normally mild-mannered coach Rick Barnes has lashed out at him verbally on a couple of occasions.
Drew also has admitted to approving a flier sent out in 2006 to Anthony Randolph, now playing with the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, which asked a question: “Since 2004, which of these Big 12 coaches has signed an All-American?” There were pictures on the flier of Bob Knight and Billie Gillispie, then at Texas A&M; there were large “Xs” across both faces. Randolph eventually signed with LSU.
Drew has copped to being aggressive, doesn’t apologize for it. His pro-active behavior and fervent negative recruiting have alienated him — but also brought a dead program to the brink of the Final Four in the space of four years. And it does show that a quick ascension certainly is possible, if occasionally distasteful.
At what cost? That’s a question Baylor will have to answer on its own. As will St. John’s, eventually, when it finally finds someone willing to take a crack at that challenge and, more to the point, if he’s successful at it.
