NEW YORK — There are two possible roads ahead for the St. John’s basketball team.
One includes Moe Harkless, the newly minted Big East Rookie of the Year, returning for his sophomore season and potentially leading the talented Johnnies back to the NCAA Tournament in 2013.
The other involves Harkless departing early for the NBA, leaving D’Angelo Harrison and the other Johnnies to carry on without him.
“I just have to sit down and think about it and I’ll talk with my coaches and everything,” Harkless said after he put up 25 points and 9 rebounds in St. John’s final game of the season, a 73-59 loss to Pittsburgh in the Big East Tournament. “And I don’t know yet.”
DraftExpress.com has the 6-foot-8 Harkless ranked as the No. 37 prospect in their Top 100 for this year’s draft.
If this was the Queens native’s last game at St. John’s (13-19), he said he was proud of what he had accomplished. His scoring output was the most by a St. John’s player in this event since Marcus Hatten put up 25 in the 2002 Big East semifinals.
“Yeah, but it’s all credit to my teammates,” Harkless said. “I couldn’t do it without those guys. As a team, we did a good job this year. Everybody held together.”
It was a strange and tough year for the Johnnies, who played most of the season without head coach Steve Lavin as he recovered from prostate cancer surgery.
The program also had three players declared academically ineligible last fall. One, Amir Garrett, arrived in December, but two other players, both point guards, Nurideen Lindsey and Malik Stith, left the program.
“Not being to have all of our signees come to school to the guys transferring and guys just not being on the team anymore, I think we did a good job of keep on fighting,” Harkless said. “No one gave up throughout the season. We showed a lot of resiliency.”
Lavin, who met the players in the locker room after the game and huddled with reporters, said he has not discussed Harkless’s future with him, but will soon meet to discuss it. He has experience with former UCLA players Jason Kapono, who tested the waters after his freshman year, and Trevor Ariza, whom Lavin recruited but never got to coach because Lavin was fired.
“I think the first is to find out, is pursuing the NBA after his freshman year a priority because it may not be,” Lavin said of Harkless. “We may be presuming that that’s on his mind and something he wants to do.
“And we won’t know until we really sit down because I haven’t pushed him on that one way or the other to try to get answer out of him. I just wanted him to focus on school and basketball and finishing the season as best as he can.”
ESPN analyst Jay Bilas told SNY.tv any player considering leaving early should do so for the right reasons.
“If you’re committed to becoming a professional, then you should do it,” Bilas said. “If you’re just doing it because my draft stock is this and all that, I think you really need to think long and hard about it.
“Whether you’re a first-round pick, second-round pick, undrafted, if you’re truly committed to becoming a professional then I think it’s fine.”
If Harkless does return to join fellow frosh Harrison, Sir’Dominic Pointer, Amir Garrett and Phil Greene, Lavin is optimistic next season when he plans to return to the sidelines full-time.
“We’ll be back and we’re going to have a crack at a lot of the teams that thumped us this year,” Lavin said. “And we need to use the discouragement and the frustration as fuel or inspiration to go to work this offseason so we’re in a better place next year.’
Lavin hopes to sign a four- or five-man recruiting class this spring to augment his current group. He’s involved with bigs Chris Obekpa and JaKarr Sampson, among others.
“I’ve been hitting the recruiting trails so I can add value by signing another strong class and add that to this group returning,” Lavin said.
Harrison, who finished with 12 points and and 10 rebounds and joined Harkless on the Big East All-Rookie Team, said the Johnnies could do something special next year if Harkless returns and they add “a couple bigs.”
“I think we’ll be a Top 25 team,” he said. “If the same people come back and what we did this year. We showed glimpses of being great and I feel like if we continue to stay with it, get stronger, get wiser throughout the game, we’ll be a really, really good team next year.”
Still, Harrison doesn’t pretend to know what his good friend will decide.
“Moe is going to make the best decision for him and his family,” he said “I’m with him whatever he picks, but I would love for him to come back. It would be super-awesome if he came back, and that’s for everybody.
“I hope everybody comes back and we’re going to get ready for next season.”
Photo: Daily News
