The St. John’s men’s basketball program should be clearing off the dust that has settled on feelings like this, which have laid dormant for decades.
After a 30-4 season, a first Big East regular season title in 40 years, their highest AP national ranking in 34 years, and a first Big East Tournament crown in 25 years, the Johnnies are storming into their first NCAA Tournament since 2019 as the No. 2 seed in the West Region.
“I’m psyched. That was my first time experiencing that,” star guard and Big East Player of the Year RJ Luis said after Selection Sunday. “Last year was hard because we sat through the whole show thinking, ‘Okay, the next pick, we are going to get in,’ and obviously, we didn’t make the tournament. So that was pretty hard just to see the seniors and what they were trying to do and build. We couldn’t get the job done. But this year, obviously, we took care of business. So, it just feels great. It’s a great opportunity. I’m very excited.”
Luis headlines a roster with a considerable lack of experience at the Big Dance, though they will still have high hopes of making a deep run into March Madness mostly because their head coach, Rick Pitino, began supplying inordinate amounts of pressure when there was not much to play for.
Ahead of the regular-season finale against Marquette on March 8, Pitino told his Red Storm, which had already wrapped up the Big East regular-season title, that this was a “This is your one and done. You lose this game. The season’s over.”
Better known, now, as the beginning of their NCAA Tournament.
They went on to pull out a dramatic, buzzer-beating overtime win, and then proceeded to prepare for the next phases of their survive-and-advance mode at the Big East Tournament. In that frame of mind, St. John’s was unstoppable at Madison Square Garden, beating Butler by 21 before 16-point victories over Marquette in the semifinals and Creighton in the championship game.
“We put a lot of pressure on them with the Marquette game, as I said earlier, and we put a lot of pressure on the guys with the Big East Tournament,” Pitino said after learning of his team’s seeding on Sunday. “We played that as if it was an NCAA game. I kept telling him that. Four minutes to go in the Marquette game, I said, ‘Alright, you’re in the first round of the NCAA, it’s survive and advance in these last four minutes.’ And I felt that was necessary because of their lack of playoff experience. And then we did the same thing with the Butler and Marquette and [Creighton].”
Pitino’s word has become gospel at St. John’s, and understandably so. He has made seven Final Fours and won two national championships, so if anyone could take an inexperienced team on a deep run in March, it’s him.
“I mean, just listening to coach and the coaching staff because obviously, they have more experience than all of us put together,” Luis said. “So really, just listening to them and just trying to be a sponge and keep working on what we’re good at, which is our defensive principles. We just got to keep on playing together.”
This St. John’s team is not built like most powerhouses in today’s game. Rather than relying on a high-paced, sharp-shooting, flashy offense, this is a program that screams blue-collar; built on defense and rebounding.
It ranks seventh in the nation in rebounds per game (40.9), 10th in turnovers forced per game (15.6), 16th in steals per game (9.2), and 17th in opponents’ field-goal percentage (40.1%).
On the offensive end, the three-headed monster of Luis, Kadary Richmond, and the Big East’s Most Improved Player of the Year, Zuby Ejiofor, contributre nearly 60% of St. Johns’ 78.7 points per game.
A well-oiled machine has perhaps meshed better than Pitino could have imagined. After all, his roster is made up of a significant number of transfers. Luis came over from UMass, Richmond from Seton Hall, Ejiofor from Kansas, and starting point guard Deivon Smith made the jump from Utah. Guard Aaron Scott, who averages the fourth-most minutes on the team, transferred from North Texas.
“I don’t think I ever knew [how well they would mesh]. I never really thought about it,” Pitino said. “Just kept taking it game-by-game, not taking anything for granted. Just never knew anything about it. I watched our guys get better, young guys get better. Watch RJ get better, but we had an incredible number of injuries, more so than a lot of teams I’ve ever coached, a lot of players out for the season. So, we had to, on the fly, keep changing, and we were resilient. So, I knew we were tough. I knew we were resilient. Did not know if we’d win the Big East Regular Season and Tournament Championship.”
They did just that, and now they get to dance starting Thursday (9:45 p.m. ET) in Providence against No. 15 Omaha.
