St. John's players resolve to learn from last season and do it Rick Pitino's way in 2024-25
St. John's Red Storm head coach Rick Pitino looks on in the first half of a Big East Conference semifinal men’s basketball game against the Connecticut Huskies at Madison Square Garden on Friday, March 15, 2024. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
The games don’t start until the first week of November. What St. John’s does right now is essential if it’s going to win them.
In the days after Selection Sunday — when the Red Storm were stunned to learn their red-hot finish hadn’t been enough to carry them into the NCAA Tournament’s field of 68 — many of the players who are returning for the coming season realized some things would need to be different for St. John’s to be successful in 2024-25. And as coach Rick Pitino said before he’d coached the Red Storm in a game, “You must make the NCAA Tournament to be successful — that’s the gauge.”
Pitino finished assembling St. John’s 2024-25 roster one week ago with the signing of forward Ruben Prey from Portugal. It concluded a period in which he added to the incoming recruiting class with several transfers, including Big East all-conference pick Kadary Richmond from Seton Hall and Pac-12 assist leader Deivon Smith from Utah.
That stretch was important. But the one they’re in right now — with most of the team assembled on campus and summer workouts underway — might be even bigger.
“Everybody was in with fresh faces [last season], experiencing something new and not knowing how to play under Coach Pitino and not knowing his coaching [style],” sophomore guard Simeon Wilcher told Newsday at a team appearance in Queens on the night of the national title game. “The way I [practiced] when [the team] first started last summer was very different from how I practiced at the end. It was like that for almost all of us. There’s a way you play for [Pitino] and you have to adjust.
“We can speed that process up with this group coming back,” he added. “The new players will have an [example] for how you’re expected to practice, to play, to live under Coach Pitino.”
The last Red Storm team had only two returning players, neither of whom had played for Pitino. This one has four returning rotation regulars — Wilcher, sophomore forward Brady Dunlap, junior forward/ center Zuby Ejiofor and junior swingman RJ Luis Jr. — who understand the commitment the Hall of Fame coach expects.
“I heard stories and I researched a lot about Coach Pitino myself, but you don’t really know how crazy-obsessed he is about basketball and all the work he’ll put [players] through to make you [good],” Dunlap said. “I don’t think many of us understood the hours and hours of film and the long practices and extra workouts he [demands]. We were all taken aback about how hard it was and then we finally started to figure out how much [is required].
“Only then did we start to really figure out the press and his offense.”
St. John’s took some inexcusable non-conference losses early, most notably against Michigan and Boston College.
“We will be a better team much earlier because guys coming back now understand the importance of those games early in the season,” Dunlap said. “We didn’t realize how important Boston College was and Michigan was, and those just killed us.”
He added: “Me and Sim and Zuby and RJ now get the importance of those early games — not just winning them, but winning them by a lot.”
The team started to pick up the beat with four wins after that, but then came the string of heartbreakers: a one-point loss at Creighton, a one-point loss to Marquette, fading late at Xavier and a three-point defeat at Providence.
In the final weeks, the Red Storm were what had been envisioned at the start. They reeled off five straight wins to close the regular season and finish fifth in the conference. Then they avenged a pair of regular-season losses to Seton Hall by beating the Pirates in a Big East quarterfinal and reaching their first semifinal since 2000, battling to a five-point loss to eventual national champion UConn.
“When we finally figured out Coach Pitino, that’s when we got really good,” Dunlap said. “Once we did that, we were able to execute his offense and his press. There was an evolution — doing things his way and doing them together — and that’s why we got good.”
St. John’s just got there too slowly in 2023-24.
“We closed out the season really strong, but starting with those tough [non-conference] losses impacted the decision of the committee [to] leave us out,” Ejiofor said.
“Everything has to start coming together earlier next season and we’re building that culture to do that,” he added. “We have a core of guys coming back. We know Coach Pitino now and the way we have to play to win . . . We can show the newer guys.”
In the big picture, there was a lot that came out of Selection Sunday when only three Big East teams made the field. Members of the selection committee suggested success at the start of the season is as important as success at the end. Big East coaches said they’d relied too much on flawed metrics. Big East officials said that lesser conferences figured out how to manipulate the numbers and vowed to address it.
When the Red Storm players found out they not only had been left out but hadn’t even been considered among the last four cut, there was massive disappointment. And that disappointment soon turned into a resolve about this season.
“It was heartbreaking seeing the guys that would be [leaving] — it made a lasting impression . . . and made me feel like I could have done more,” Dunlap said.“I don’t ever want to have that feeling again.”
“It motivates me to know for sure we’re going to get our name called next time, not leave it up to the committee,” Wilcher said. “None of us want to go through that — feel that messed up — again, and that’s what we’re going to be talking about from Day 1 of summer workouts.”
Pitino’s biggest restoration projects — Providence, Kentucky and Louisville — had moderate success in the first year and then took off in the second year.
“I’m very optimistic [because] if you looked at all the stats on Coach Pitino . . . the second year he gets it going,” Dunlap said. “We’ll be one year stronger, have another year of Pitino development and have a bunch of players that know the Pitino way.”
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.