St. John's three-point shooting still a work in progress
St. John's Red Storm guard Simeon Wilcher shoots for a basket over DePaul Blue Demons guard Conor Enright in the first half of a Big East mens basketball game at Carnesecca Arena on Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
They say that timing is everything, and this one might be timed just right.
Most Big East schools haven’t played since last weekend, when all had their second conference contest. Eight of them won’t play again until Tuesday, when head-to-head Big East competition resumes. Rick Pitino and his coaching staff, however, inserted Saturday's 6 p.m. non-conference game against Delaware at Carnesecca Arena in the middle, giving St. John's a way to shake off some rust and try to work some things out.
The Red Storm's three-point shooting has declined during their five-game winning streak. In their first six games, they averaged 8.8 threes and made 39.3% of their shots from beyond the arc. But in their last six contests, the Red Storm (10-2) averaged 5.0 three-pointers and 23.6% shooting.
Overall, St. John’s is shooting 31.7% from three-point range, which ranks 275th in the country.
“You're going to miss shots,” Simeon Wilcher said Friday. “We haven’t been sulking about it, but we haven’t made many threes the last couple games. It’s something we want to do. We’re just struggling with it now. It’s a work in progress.”
St. John’s has shown it is capable of overcoming poor long-range shooting. It pulled out a 72-70 comeback win over Providence on Dec. 20 with its perimeter defense and offensive rebounding despite shooting 3-for-18 from three-point range.
"I feel like we're in a very good place,” Wilcher said. “We have an opportunity in front of us to do some really good things this season and we're just kind of taking it day-by-day, just trying to become 1% better every day as a team . . . We're very confident in ourselves and what we could do. And over the season, we're just going to continue to grow."
That doesn’t mean the Red Storm wouldn’t be better if they added three-point shooting to their toolbox for Tuesday's game at Creighton.
“It’s very important, but that’s not the only thing we could rely on,” Wilcher said. “It's not something that we rely on alone because like [Providence] or [DePaul], it may not be a shooting night.”
During this three-point shooting slump, RJ Luis Jr. is 3-for-19 and Aaron Scott 5-for-31. A bit of a saving grace has been the shooting of Deivon Smith, who is 5-for-12, and Wilcher, who is 7-for-19. Kadary Richmond, who still may be adjusting to the new mechanics of his outside shot, took only five in those six games and missed them all.
After St. John's win over Harvard on Nov. 30 in which the Red Storm went 6-for-27 from outside the arc, Pitino said of his team's three-point shooting, “I don’t think it’s an asset for us.
“Aaron takes too long to get his shot off, but he's very good shooter based on all our numbers that we do,” he added. “RJ doesn't shoot it normal — he tries to get extra arc, which is not necessary, because he has a natural shot that creates arc.”
The situation isn’t improved by the absence of Brady Dunlap, the team’s top three-point threat, who had surgery to repair a ligament in his left hand on Dec. 19 and will miss four to six weeks.
Delaware (7-5) might be a good opponent to get St. John’s back on track. The Blue Hens’ last two opponents went a combined 20-for-45 from beyond the arc.
Coming to America
St. John’s has dubbed Saturday night's game "Coming to America Night" to mark the anniversary of the program’s 1987 Holiday Festival game against Marist at the Garden that was featured in the 1988 film starring Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall. Three $1,000 prizes will be awarded to fans who produce the three highest-quality original tickets from that game.
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.
