St. John’s fans aren’t the only ones encouraged by Mike Anderson’s first season in Queens. The school’s all-time winningest coach liked what he saw as well from the veteran coach.
“Oh, I was impressed,” Lou Carnesecca told The Post in a rare interview. “I would say Coach Anderson is ready-made. You know what I mean by that? He’s ready. He’s coached at a very high level. He’s coached some great, great teams. So, he knows his Ps and Qs.”
St. John’s went 17-15 in Anderson’s first year in Queens, knocking off projected NCAA tournament teams such as Arizona, West Virginia, Marquette and Creighton, extending his streak of 18 seasons without a losing campaign. It won its opening-round Big East Tournament game, rallying from a big deficit to knock off Georgetown, and was up at halftime in the quarterfinals over Creighton before the tournament was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Johnnies would have likely been headed to the NIT, had one been played, barring a surprising run to the conference’s tournament title.
“And when he gets some [more] good players, they’re going to be [a force] to be reckoned with because his style, you got to prepare for it. They come at you with pressure for the whole game,” the 95-year-old Carnesecca said. “I think he’ll do a great job. I thought he did a wonderful job this year.”
Carnesecca, of course, knows the previous coach, his former star player Chris Mullin, well. Mullin, who had never previously coached before taking the job in 2015 at his alma mater, led the Johnnies to the NCAA Tournament in his fourth and final season before parting ways with the program last spring. He spent this past year working for NBC Sports Bay Area as a pregame and postgame analyst for Warriors games.
“I just don’t know if he was happy. You’d have to ask him,” Carnesecca said. “It was a new venture for him, too. He knows basketball very well. But coaching is not an easy thing, because there’s so much involved today. It’s much more difficult than when I started. You got many more factors.”