St. John’s has no idea what it wants in a head coach

With the late signing period just days away, St. John’s still has no idea what direction they want to go to fill their vacant head coaching position.

With Cincinnati hiring John Brannen on Monday, St. John’s is the lone power conference team still looking for a head coach. It would make sense to have a new hire in place before the late signing period begins on Wednesday, but the Red Storm don’t really appear to have much of a plan in place.

Despite the fact that Iona’s Tim Cluess would be a perfect fit for the job, St. John’s is still exploring other options, including Loyola-Chicago’s Porter Moser. Moser, 50, is most famous for taking the Ramblers to the Final Four last year and is 141-125 in eight seasons with Loyola-Chicago.

The fact that there is this much internal division over what should be a simple coaching hire explains a lot of what has gone wrong for St. John’s over the years. Moser is certainly a fine head coach and deserves a ton of credit for taking a team from the Missouri Valley Conference to the Final Four, but his overall record isn’t that great.

Cluess may not have the bullet point of a Final Four appearance on his resume like Moser does, but he makes more sense since he is a consistent winner in the New York area, guiding his teams to six NCAA Tournament appearances in nine years (compared to the Ramblers’ one trip under Moser) and even played at St. John’s for three years, so he knows the area far better than Moser.

This, again, screams that St. John’s is trying to get the big shiny object instead of the best pure basketball hire. Age certainly plays a factor here as Moser is 10 years younger than Cluess, but the fact that Cluess was reportedly the frontrunner for the job on Friday and St. John’s is interviewing another coach days later doesn’t look good.

This type of indecisiveness and lack of comprehension of what they need out of a coach explains a lot about why St. John’s hasn’t been truly relevant in college basketball for the past two decades. The simplest option is right in front of them in Cluess, but it isn’t a sexy enough hire when they can pitch a guy who took a mid-major to the Final Four.

Moser simply has to hope he’ll get longer than five years to rebuild the Red Storm, unlike his two immediate predecessors, Steve Lavin and Chris Mullin.