St. John's gets chance to see how good it is against Wagner before schedule gets much tougher
St. John's forward Brady Dunlap (44) shoots a foul shot in the second half against the Towson Tigers at Carnesecca Arena, Saturday, Oct. 26, 2024. Credit: Corey Sipkin
While St. John’s opened its season with a pair of lopsided non-conference wins and this week cracked the Top 25 for the first time since a one-week stay in January 2019, the 22nd-ranked Red Storm has some serious issues to address.
A big one is the surprising underperformance of 6-9 center Zuby Ejiofor, who may lose his spot in the starting lineup to 7-2 Vince Iwuchukwu after managing just three rebounds in the two contests. The Red Storm also has been inconsistent defending against the three-point shot and coach Rick Pitino was very critical about stopping the transition game.
That’s why Wednesday night’s contest against Wagner at Carnesecca Arena, while lacking a big-game feel, is so important. The game is the Red Storm’s final tuneup before a quartet of contests that could largely shape the way the team is evaluated by the NCAA Tournament selection committee in March.
On Sunday, St. John’s faces Richard Pitino-coached New Mexico, a 2023 NCAA Tournament team that beat then-No. 22 UCLA last week, in their first game at the Garden this season. And in the following seven days it plays three games in the Bahamas against high-major competition: No. 12 Baylor, either No. 11 Tennessee or Virginia and then Georgia.
“Our transition defense . . . is a major weakness,” Rick Pitino said after Saturday’s 23-point win over Quinnipiac. “You play a team like New Mexico in the Garden, they’ll beat us by 25 or 30 because they’re the fastest team end to end. And if we play that type of transition defense, we have no shot of beating them. So, we’ve got to make the adjustments this week.”
Defense was the focus of 60% of the time in St. John’s practices last season. Pitino adjusted that to 80% this season because, he said, “I wanted to get off to a great start.” And the Storm learned the import of a great start the hard way last March, when the early-season losses to Michigan and Boston College tarnished their 20 wins and strong finish to where they were passed over for NCAA Tournament selection.
Ejiofor created high expectations with his 27-point, 13-rebound effort in the Oct. 17 exhibition game win over nationally ranked Rutgers. And though he had five blocked shots in Saturday’s win, he’s averaged only 6.5 points in addition to the anemic rebounding. Iwuchukwu had identical lines in the first two games: six points, four rebounds and one blocked shot in 15 minutes.
“Zuby did not have an offensive rebound, which is disturbing for me,” Pitino said. “That’s two games in a row where he didn’t rebound, so we may have to go with Vince.”
There were also a lot of promising things that came out of the first two games.
Brady Dunlap looks like a vastly improved player so far and delivered a career-high 20 points Saturday, including 5-for-7 shooting on three-point attempts. And Utah transfer Deivon Smith looked like he already has a feel for playing point guard for this group, finishing with 13 points, 10 assists and five rebounds.
Dunlap, a sophomore forward, is playing a different game this season, no longer just spotting up on the arc, and he knows that he has to be more than just a shooter.
“I’ve just got to come in to each game and fill a different role . . . and understand what that is,” he said.
“All he did last year was hunt threes — now he moves without the basketball,” Pitino said. “He’s a veteran. Now he knows how to play the game.”
And St. John’s showed character Saturday by regrouping after a poor start that led to a halftime deficit. They were more like the team Pitino has envisioned after the break.
“Last year at this time, we would have lost this game,” he said. “But this team did the right things to win . . . I’m just hoping that this team evolves into the team that we had at the end of last year.”
St. John’s will be judged by many things this season, most importantly how they perform against an improved Big East. But there are other things, too, and the first of those begins in less than a week. Wednesday night could show how prepared they are for it.
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.