Back in February, after St. John’s finished off a season sweep of two-time defending NCAA champion UConn, Huskies head coach Dan Hurley offered his assessment of the resurgent Red Storm.
“They’ve got a championship-level defense,” Hurley said. “I think they have championship-level offensive rebounding. How their season goes from here is going to, in large part, come down to being able to make enough shots.”
That proved to be prophetic.
Second-seeded St. John’s shot just 28% from the field and went 2-of-22 on 3-point attempts in Saturday’s 75-66 loss to 10th-seeded Arkansas in the NCAA Tournament’s second round.
The elimination in Providence, R.I., brought a sudden end to a storybook season in which St. John’s won 31 games, its first outright Big East regular-season championship since 1985 and its first Big East Tournament title since 2000.
“I hate to see them go out this way,” head coach Rick Pitino said. “We thought we were championship-driven in our minds, but I have been disappointed before with this. You hate to see us play like that.”
But the fact St. John’s was even in a position to be upset in the Round of 32 spoke volumes about how far the program has come.
When St. John’s hired Pitino two years ago, the Johnnies had made only three NCAA Tournaments since 2002 and none since 2019. They had not won a game at the Big Dance since 2000.
Pitino brought with him a Hall of Fame pedigree, having led Kentucky (1996) and Louisville (2013) to national championships. He vowed at his introductory press conference that St. John’s was “going to be back.”
The turnaround started last year, when St. John’s finished 20-13 — its first 20-win season in five years — but came up short of the NCAA Tournament.
No one anticipated what would come next.
In their preseason poll, the Big East coaches picked St. John’s to finish fifth in the conference.
But the Johnnies quickly shattered those expectations. Behind the nation’s most-efficient defense and sixth-best rebounding unit, the Red Storm rolled to a 27-4 record in the regular season, including 18-2 in conference play.
Fueling St. John’s were breakout seasons by RJ Luis Jr., who was named Big East Player of the Year and the conference tournament’s Most Outstanding Player, and Zuby Ejiofor, who was the conference’s Most Improved Player.
Offseason transfers Kadary Richmond, Deivon Smith and Aaron Scott turned out to be ideal complements, bringing grittiness and defensive prowess.
St. John’s captivated the city, going 18-0 in home games and 12-0 at Madison Square Garden. Each of the Red Storm’s final three regular-season games at MSG were sellouts. A raucous Garden crowd remained decidedly in their favor as St. John’s won the Big East Tournament there this month.
The Johnnies entered March Madness at No. 5 in the AP Poll — their highest ranking since January of 1991, when Lou Carnesecca, who died in November at 99, was still the head coach.
St. John’s found ways to win despite its flaws.
“When you see a team shoot 38% from the field, 33% from three and 58.6% from the free-throw line, you’re gonna lose by double digits,” Pitino said after a Feb. 16 victory over Creighton in which St. John’s put up those percentages. “But every single night, this team wins.”
The Red Storm’s 3-point percentage, which dropped to 30.1% after Saturday’s loss, ranked 341st in the nation.
They regularly fell behind in first halves, only to wear down opponents with their physical style of play and rally to wins after halftime. That was the case in wins against Marquette and Creighton in the conference tournament and against 15th-seeded Omaha in the NCAA Tournament’s first round.
But those issues loomed large in Saturday’s loss to John Calipari-led Arkansas.
St. John’s missed 23 of its first 28 shots and trailed, 22-14, less than 12 minutes into the game.
“We’ve been down before, so we didn’t think too much of it,” Ejiofor said. “We were just telling each other that we’re just going to do whatever it takes to win, start on the defensive end, just get stops. Then we took the lead and … I don’t know what happened, but we ended up losing the lead again and we couldn’t really recover from that point.”
Arkansas’ size proved problematic. The Razorbacks blocked seven shots and disrupted many more, leading to 17 missed lay-ups by St. John’s.
“We haven’t faced that type of length and athleticism this year,” Pitino said. “That’s not the reason we lost the game. We lost the game because we did not move the basketball enough and that led to us shooting a very low percentage.”
It was an especially rough afternoon for Luis, who finished with nine points on 3-of-17 shooting, including 0-of-3 on 3-point attempts, in 30 minutes.
Luis spent the game’s final 4:56 on the bench. Pressed about that decision, Pitino replied, “You know he was 3-for-17. You know he was 0-for-3, so you’re answering your own (question). I’m not going to knock one of my players.”
The nine-point loss was the largest of the season for St. John’s. Its other four losses came by a combined seven points.
“It feels like we didn’t do anything, really, after today,” Luis said. “It just sucks to lose the way we lost and the way we went out.”
St. John’s is set to enter next season with more continuity than it had in its first two under Pitino. Luis and Ejiofor are both eligible to return, as is fellow starter Simeon Wilcher. Freshmen Vince Iwuchukwu, Lefteris Liotopoulos and Ruben Prey all figure to take on bigger roles.
But Richmond, a Brooklyn native who made the All-Big East second team, is out of NCAA eligibility, as are the speedy Smith and the hard-nosed Scott. Those three were essential parts of the Red Storm’s win-at-all-costs identity.
“We had a special group of guys from the coaching staff down to the players and the managers, and I’m thankful and appreciative they allowed me to come here and be the person I am,” Richmond said. “I will always be thankful to them for that.”
Asked how much this 31-5 season can help St. John’s moving forward, Pitino said, “I hope it does a lot.”
Pitino has spoken about the benefit of being a basketball-first school as the NCAA’s NIL rules transition to a revenue-sharing model, through which most Division I programs will prioritize football.
But with the wounds still fresh from this season’s earlier-than-expected ending, Pitino and his players took time to acknowledge some of the good.
“We put New York on our back,” Smith said. “We made a lot of people proud. We still had an unforgettable season, made a lot of history.”