St. John's Kadary Richmond has begun to adjust to Rick Pitino's different style of play
St. John's Red Storm guard Kadary Richmond shoots to score past DePaul Blue Demons guard Jacob Meyer in the second half of a Big East men’s basketball game at Carnesecca Arena on Tuesday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
There was a vision when Kadary Richmond decided to transfer from Seton Hall to St. John’s. In Richmond, the Red Storm were getting a Big East veteran coming off an all-conference first-team selection and an NIT championship. He had the right resume to replace Daniss Jenkins as the team’s go-to guy.
That vision started to come into focus during St. John’s most recent four-game winning streak, and the picture got much clearer in the first five minutes of the second half of its 28-point win over DePaul in Tuesday’s Big East opener.
The Red Storm (9-2, 1-0) left the Blue Demons in the dust with a 15-4 run in the first 4:38 of the second half, with Richmond scoring 10 points and capping it with a three-point play for a 55-33 lead.
Richmond finished with 18 points, seven rebounds and two assists. The Red Storm outscored DePaul by 32 in his 28 minutes on the floor.
“I’d say it’s a step in the right direction, but I wouldn’t call it a breakthrough or anything like that,” Richmond said Thursday as St. John’s readied for Friday’s game against Providence (7-5, 1-0) at Amica Mutual Pavilion. “My teammates were getting me the ball and I was getting the ball in the right spots. I was making shots and continuing my aggression from the first half and shots just started falling.”
That vision for Richmond was somewhat blurry during the first seven games, as he averaged 9.1 points and shot 44% but also contributed 5.3 rebounds and 5.1 assists per game.
In the four-game winning streak, he’s averaged 14.5 points, 6.0 rebounds and 3.8 assists and shooting 49%.
St. John’s coach Rick Pitino attributes Richmond’s slow start to a move from Seton Hall’s deliberate style to the Red Storm’s fast-paced one.
“Kadary is just getting used to a new style of play,” Pitino said. “He played for a very well-drilled, well-coached basketball team at Seton Hall. Now he goes to the polar opposite style of play, a very fast, up-and-down team, and he just has to get adjusted to that. And he’s adjusting. He’s getting better and better in practice.”
“You just get a lot more possessions offensively,” Richmond said. “We walked the ball up last year at Seton Hall, and to come here and run up and down at such a high rate was a little bit different . . . I think it’s more fun. [There’s] more offensive possessions.”
Pace wasn’t the only adjustment. He was the primary playmaker for the Pirates, but St. John’s has another skilled point guard in Deivon Smith, so the ball isn’t always in his hands. And over the summer, Pitino sought to improve Richmond’s outside shooting by adjusting the mechanics of his shot. There have been times when he’s looked hesitant to deploy it, as if he’s thinking about the changes.
During the Red Storm’s three-game trip to the Bahamas, he was asked how he’d done incorporating the new mechanics and told reporters he was “40 to 50% there.”
On Thursday, he was asked about a first-half free throw that missed everything and said, “Just thinking too much about the changes.” But he said the key to avoid that is “just know what you’re capable of and what you worked on.”
Richmond’s adjustment to all that has changed appears to be sinking in now. He has been more assertive and more present in critical parts of games.
“I feel like when you get comfortable and you know what you’re capable of, what you could do, you could start showing it,” he said. “[There’s] more belief in yourself with the level of [comfort] you’ll have throughout the season.”
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.