Go figure (bear with me)

Having grown up in New York and played tons of basketball in my life -- believe it or not, I was a point guard on my high school team -- I've always been a big fan of the team at St. John's University. Back in the day everyone around here followed St. John's because it was legitimately exciting to see a local commuter school with a team comprised of kids from the boroughs compete, and occasionally beat, the best teams in the country. Some of the best times I can remember as a kid were trips to the Garden with my father to see Xaverian's Chris Mullin and Bishop Loughlin's Mark Jackson take on Patrick Ewing and the rest of Georgetown's "evil empire" back in the eighties.

The program, unfortunately, has gone through a rough stretch for the past decade or so. With the exception of a few solid years under Fran Fraschilla and Mike Jarvis -- both of whom left the school in disgrace, by the way -- the Johnnies have pretty much sucked ass since Lou Carnesecca retired in the early nineties. I never thought much of Looie as a coach, quite frankly, but he ran a clean program, recruited the shit out of the city, won games, and went deep into the NCAA tournament just about every year.

Even though SJU has been off the map for several years now -- a decline that pretty much coincides with my waning interest in basketball -- I still maintain my custom of keeping track of how they're doing. I've been doing this for years, even during periods where I wasn't living in New York. Tonight, St. John's played Long Island University at Carnesecca Arena -- which I still have to consciously stop myself from calling Alumni Hall -- and I came home earlier looking for a score.

I couldn't find the result of the game anywhere online -- SJU won, 64-46, but for some reason it wasn't listed in the Big East section of ESPN.com's scoreboard -- so I checked the St. John's message board at scout.com, which has forums for just about every major college program in the country. If you went to a school with big-time sports, and you want to read what all your team's misanthropic shut-in fans are thinking, this is your site.

In any case, I looked around this board for a little while and found this gem of a thread. It starts out discussing another St. John's basketball forum, but veers off track a wee bit toward the bottom of the first page and on succeeding pages. Enjoy.