It wasn’t long ago that the new era of St. John’s basketball was supposedly upon us. New coach Steve Lavin had put together one of the best recruiting classes in school history, the Red Storm had reached the NCAA Tournament, and the world looked new and fresh and easily dominated. Since then, it has all fallen apart. Lavin has missed the entire season while recovering from his cancer treatments and surgery, large swaths of that recruiting class have left the program, and the team has lost and lost and lost. Last night might have been the nadir. The Red Storm lost 76–54 at the Garden to Cincinnati and announced that guard Malik Stith was leaving the team for “personal” reasons. That leaves St. John’s with just six scholarship players. The team is now 10-14 overall and 4-8 in the Big East, and look to be a non-factor in what might be the final true Big East tournament. It is very possible that the good ole days of St. John’s basketball was, in fact, last year. At least Long Island basketball is good. (Correction: Initially this post had the Red Storm’s lousy record better than it actually was. We apologize for being accidentally nicer.)