St. John's No. 10 in AP Top 25 poll
St. John's guard Kadary Richmond is fouled by Creighton center Fredrick King, right, during the second half on Sunday at MSG. Credit: AP/Noah K. Murray
A five-day stretch of ups and downs for St. John’s that began with having its 10-game winning streak snapped by unranked Villanova on Wednesday and ended with a victory over then-No. 24 Creighton on Sunday did not cost the Red Storm their top 10 spot in the national rankings.
St. John’s slipped only a single spot and came in at No. 10 in the AP Top 25 released Monday afternoon. The only other Big East team in the rankings is Marquette, which climbed two spots to No. 16. Creighton dropped out but is still receiving votes.
St. John’s (22-4, 13-2) is ranked for a fifth straight week, the first time that has happened since the 2014-15 season. The Red Storm have been ranked in the top 10 for consecutive weeks for the first time since the 1984-85 Final Four team.
After the two-point loss at Villanova, coach Rick Pitino said guard Deivon Smith could miss the rest of the regular season with shoulder and neck injuries that forced him to sit out four games in five weeks and look hampered when he played. On Friday, Pitino revised that, saying Smith would miss at least the Creighton game.
On Saturday, the NCAA Tournament selection committee revealed its first 16 seeds and had St. John’s as a No. 4 seed. And on Sunday, Smith returned and played at a level of effectiveness that had been missing since before he suffered his shoulder injury on Jan. 11.
“Without him, we don’t win this game,” Pitino said after Smith contributed eight points and three assists in 26 minutes.
“It was one of the biggest shocks of the year for me because I thought we were looking, at the earliest, [until] after Connecticut [Feb. 23],” Pitino said.
St. John’s will meet DePaul at 9 p.m. Wednesday in Chicago and face Connecticut at noon on Sunday at the Garden.
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.
