Zuby Ejiofor throws a strike at Citi Field, and St. John's hopes for home runs in the transfer portal
St. John's Red Storm forward Zuby Ejiofor throws out a ceremonial first pitch to former Mets and St. John's pitcher John Franco at Citi Field on Wednesday. Credit: Brad Penner
Zuby Ejiofor looks natural crashing the backboards for St. John’s at the Garden. However the Red Storm star looked very out of place on Wednesday afternoon on the pitcher’s mound at Citi Field.
That was right until he made a smooth delivery of the ceremonial first pitch that went over the plate and into the glove of former Mets star and St. John’s alumnus John Franco as most of the 2024-25 Storm and coach Rick Pitino stood in a semicircle behind the catcher’s box.
“It went better than I expected,” Ejiofor said. “I threw a perfect strike in the eyes of many.”
Pitino and the Red Storm were on hand as the Mets honored them for winning the Big East regular-season and conference tournament championships. Prior to Ejiofor’s pitch, the Mets showed a video tribute on the centerfield scoreboard that concluded with his buzzer beater to beat Marquette in Milwaukee a month ago.
“We saw it last year with us: it was our story where nobody knew if we were able to do anything,” said Mets manager Carlos Mendoza, who led from a staggering start to last season’s NL Championship Series. “We saw it with the basketball team. Everybody was watching it. Everybody was behind the team. And it's pretty special.”
Still holding the ball – which he plans to send to his family – Ejiofor said, “I'll stick to basketball. I've never played baseball in my life and I threw a pretty good pitch . . . So to go out there and do as good as I did, I feel pretty accomplished.”
Pitino threw out a ceremonial first pitch at Citi Field in June 2023, and Ejiofor said his only advice was “don’t bounce it.” Another member of the coaching staff sent him a video of the infamously bad first pitch by rapper 50 Cent.
Someone from St. John’s making a pitch is shockingly apropos right now.
Pitino and his staff are working the NCAA transfer portal to build the 2025-26 team around a bunch of returning players headed by starters Ejiofor and Simeon Wilcher. They’ve already picked up two major players – Providence transfer Bryce Hopkins, a forward, and Arizona State transfer Joson Sanon, a wing.
A bunch of players who went into the portal have been linked to St. John’s. Some already have committed elsewhere, but four coveted players are scheduled to make campus visits in the next few days:
- Oziyah Sellers, a 6-5 guard from Stanford who averaged 13.7 points and shot 40% on threes
- Xaivian Lee, a 6-3 guard from Princeton who averaged 16.9 points, 6.1 rebounds and 5.5 assists
- Dillon Mitchell, a 6-8 forward from Cincinnati who averaged 9.6 points and 6.9 rebounds
- Bronx product Ian Jackson, a 6-4 guard from North Carolina who averaged 11.9 points.
“We need shooting as much as anything to go far in the NCAA Tournament,” Pitino said. “Every team can guard and play defense. Houston and us, we were the two best defensive teams [this season], but it's the offensive teams that really go far in the tournament. You have to have a great offense and we were not a great offensive basketball team this year.”
St. John’s already has lost four of its six top scorers from this season. Big East Player of the Year RJ Luis Jr. declared for the NBA Draft and put his name in the portal, and Kadary Richmond, Deivon Smith and Aaron Scott exhausted their eligibility. Brady Dunlap, a top outside shooter who was limited to 10 games by injuries, also opted for the portal.
St. John's Red Storm head coach Rick Pitino talks to former Mets and St. John's pitcher John Franco after a press conference before a game at Citi Field on Wednesday. Credit: Brad Penner
Simeon Wilcher staying at St. John's
Wilcher had options but has opted to stay at St. John’s. This season, he started 25 games and averaged 8.0 points and 1.9 rebounds in 26 minutes and he plans to work this offseason to put on weight, hone his jump shot and improve his ballhandling.
“I'm just a big guy on loyalty,” he said of the decision to stay. “Kind of like to keep my feet grounded, where they are. And there’s things that I want to do better . . . this next year.”
A big question last offseason was how Wilcher’s role would be with the additions of Richmond from Seton Hall and Smith from Utah. It could be the same this offseason, but he said, “I'm not really worried about anything. I know we're going to bring in some guys because we need to, because we want to win some games and that’s all I'm really worried about.”
“Sim’s a competitor,” Pitino said. “He's a veteran. He knows the system. It's going to be much more difficult for the people coming in, than it will be for Sim.”
Praising their push through pain
Pitino praised the fortitude of Richmond and Scott this season and said that both required surgery shortly after the team was eliminated from the NCAA Tournament.
“We were a pretty banged-up basketball team at that point, but I still, more than anything else, admire Kadary and Aaron fighting through a lot of pain," Pitino said.
Richmond was at Citi Field with a cast on his left wrist and hand. He said he thought he’d suffered a jammed thumb in the March 8 win at Marquette and didn’t know he required surgery until the next day when he got it examined.
He said the recovery period is six weeks, after which he can begin training for workouts with NBA teams in advance of the draft.
Richmond fouled out after playing only 16 minutes in the Storm’s NCAA Tournament loss to Arkansas. He said he had moved past that and added, “It was tough – I didn’t get a chance to sweat.”
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.
