Sports of The Times; After 526 Victories at St. John's, Looie Carnesecca's Number Is Up

By George Vecsey 

The New York Times - Jan. 21, 2001

See the article in its original context from January 21, 2001, Section 8, Page 4Buy Reprints

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HE took exactly one shot in Madison Square Garden, although it was actually more of a chuck. A heave. A brick. An air ball, decades before the term was invented.

Despite his lifetime 0-for-1 excursion into long-range gunnery, his number will be hung from the rafters. And what a number it is, three full digits' worth -- 526, the number of games won by St. John's University during the regime of Lou Carnesecca.

The St. John's jersey will be unveiled during the Connecticut game on Jan. 30, and Looie, now 76, will no doubt recall the old barn farther up on Eighth Avenue, where he made his one mad fling for glory.

''I did play one game in the old Garden,'' he said recently. ''I was a terrible player. But I always wanted to be a coach. I was coaching little kids in the neighborhood, so they put me on the team at St. Ann's, but I never played. I was terrible.''

St. Ann's was a high school on the East Side of Manhattan, now gone, like many other places and characters that remain vibrant as Looie chats about them.

''This was in the days when we played high school games in the Garden, and we were up by 40 points against St. Simon Stock, and the coach put me in, Dave Tobey, God rest his soul.

''I was smart enough not to take the ball out of bounds because, hah, I knew I would never get it back, so I got the ball and as soon as I cross the 10-second line I let it fly. I didn't even hit the rim or the backboard. The coach just took me right out of the game, and that was it.''

Somehow, this 0-for-1 shooter kept going, pursuing a totally different dream from that of his father.

The parents came from northern Tuscany, a little town called Pontremoli, ''nothing but rocks, where every man is a stone mason,'' and they were married in New York and ran a grocery first on 102nd Street and then on 62nd Street, and made the son wash the floors of the grocery on Saturday morning before he could go out and play baseball under the 59th Street Bridge.

''You'd come home after a couple of games looking like a coal miner,'' Looie said. ''Whitey Ford played there.''

The father wanted the son to be a doctor because ''that was a profession you could look up to -- confidant, father figure, parish priest.''

Of course, a basketball coach could also be these things. But first, Looie tried to please his father. Nobody remembers this, but the man with 526 victories at St. John's started at Fordham.

''I was taking a premed course,'' he said. ''Two months. I hated it. I was miserable. Somebody made a call to St. John's. All my friends were there. They put me on the team. I was terrible.''

He recalls one basket against Brooklyn College, in a JV game. The coaches are all gone. Joe Lapchick. Frank McGuire. The old coach, Buck Freeman, brilliant but a bit moody, kept on as a valued adviser.

''Buck was a genius, God rest his soul,'' Carnesecca said. ''He couldn't sleep at night, so I'd walk around with him at one in the morning. He'd tell you, every foul shot, two and a half revolutions before going in.''

Wrapped around a hitch in the Coast Guard, a haul to Australia, Carnesecca decided he had to be a coach. Somebody got sick, and he was offered the job at his old school, St. Ann's, and he sent players on to St. John's and North Carolina and everywhere else.

They closed St. Ann's and moved it to Queens, renamed it Archbishop Molloy, and after one year Carnesecca went home to St. John's as an assistant to Lapchick, a wonderful man who kept a scrapbook of the gambling scandals and demanded that every player read it.

In the summers, Carnesecca worked at the All-America Camp at Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, listening to Clair Bee and Nat Holman and Red Auerbach and Red Holzman, and when Lapchick's reign at St. John's was over, Little Looie, with 2 points in a JV game, was the head coach.

''Players,'' he says with passion. ''We got players. I can't start to mention names. You always forget somebody. Too many. Wonderful players.''

He did five years and then succumbed to the bizarre calling of the New York Nets of the American Basketball Association.

''Temporary insanity,'' he says.

By the third year, he knew it was not for him. ''It wasn't the X's and O's,'' he said. ''That part was great. A hundred and ten games a year. This was a job. It wasn't rah-rah. Jack McMahon, God rest his soul, finally told me: 'You can't take every game so seriously. You're going to kill yourself.' I almost did.''

He sent out feelers. St. John's had his job for him.

By the mid-70's, there was talk of starting a new conference called the Big East.

''I was against it,'' Carnesecca said. ''I felt, we already played those teams. Boy, was I wrong. I remember Frank McGuire saying to me, 'Lou, the honeymoon is over.' He coached in the Atlantic Coast Conference. He knew what the Big East would be. Great rivalries. Great personalities. Thompson, Massimino, Raftery, Mullaney, Perno, my boy from Syracuse, Boeheim, who does a great job every year.

''One time we were playing Seton Hall, everything went in, I had the players,'' he said. ''We're up by 40 in the second half, and I mean, I'm using everybody. I feel a tap on my shoulder. It's the Seton Hall manager. He handed me a slip of paper. He said Coach Raftery wanted me to read it. It said, 'I surrender.' He surrendered! And he said, 'P.S.: If you want to work against a zone, I'll do it.' Great personalities.''

One time John Thompson wore a ghastly sweater, nearly as ugly as the ones Looie wore as his trademark. Next time Looie draped huge towels over his tiny shoulders, to parody Thompson's signature. The novelty has sort of leveled off now, but when they were building it, it was sensational.

''We shoulda marketed the sweaters,'' Looie figured out recently. ''Coulda made a fortune.''

The sweaters were his signature, along with his leprechaun fandangos, with the occasional impromptu incursion onto the court, breaking up more opposing fast breaks than some of his own lads.

Nine years ago, Carnesecca retired from coaching, with one Final Four appearance. Three of his later guys, Chris Mullin and Mark Jackson and Jayson Williams, grew up to be stars, charismatic and intelligent. Last year St. John's had problems with a young player, Erick Barkley, who was suspended for receiving illegal tuition aid for prep school through his ties to a church team.

''In those days, the coach had control,'' Looie whispered hoarsely, meaning before the infiltration of the sneaker companies and the agents and the amateur teams and the pro scouts with their alternate agendas.

He won his 526. Now they will hang it from the rafters.

''I'd be less than honest if I said I wasn't thrilled,'' he said. ''What a wonderful thing. I could have been slicing salami.''

He is an ambassador for St. John's, with an office inside the red facade and green peaked roof of Sun Yat Sen Hall, imported direct from China.

Some days he goes to Dante's on Union Turnpike and does lunch. A few blocks from home, a few blocks from school. He's a New York guy, whose mother used to say the best tap water in the world was in Manhattan, better even than in Queens.

''That's why the pizza and pasta and the bagels are best in New York,'' he said, lowering his voice reverentially. ''You look at me, you think I'm kidding. It's a fact.''

It's a fact, like the 526 victories, soon to hang in the ''new'' Garden, well within the small, familiar circle of a man who knew he was most comfortable close to home.

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 21, 2001, Section 8, Page 4 of the National edition with the headline: Sports of The Times; After 526 Victories at St. John's, Looie Carnesecca's Number Is Up.