St. John's Rick Pitino wants players to realize they can't let up
Rick Pitino of St. John's reacts in the first half against Creighton at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2025. Credit: Jim McIsaac
The path to an outright Big East regular-season title may be clearer now after ninth-ranked St. John’s defeated No. 24 Creighton before a sellout crowd of 19,812 at the Garden on Sunday.
But Rick Pitino has something much bigger in mind for the Red Storm, the sort of achievement that comes only in an NCAA Tournament. And the Hall of Fame coach is taking an approach to winning the conference title that is designed precisely with that in mind.
“We could go to DePaul [on Wednesday] and lose and all this hard work [is] down the drain, so that was my message to them: that anybody in this conference could beat anybody,” Pitino said. “Every team in the NCAA Tournament can beat you. You have to [understand that], and that’s what I’m trying to do: Coach them right now for the tournament, that every game is tournament-driven.”
St. John’s got back a big piece on Sunday, with guard Deivon Smith making a surprising return, and then performed the number that we’ve all grown used to seeing this season. The Red Storm had another bad shooting game from the floor and the free-throw line but managed to overcome it with offensive rebounds (20), points off turnovers (20) and keeping turnovers to a minimum (five). And the nation’s second-ranked defense held Creighton to 18 points in the final 14:51 of a 79-73 victory.
The win gave St. John’s (22-4, 13-2 Big East) a two-game lead over second-place Creighton with five games to play, including three against the bottom three in the standings.
The Red Storm’s resurgent season, in which they are winning at a rate not seen since long before the current players were born, clearly has captured the imagination of New Yorkers. Sunday’s sellout follows a 19,000-plus turnout for their win over then-No. 11 Marquette last week.
The players feel what’s come together around them.
“It feels good going around being noticed because of the way we play and what we’re doing as a team,” said Kadary Richmond, a Brooklyn native.
“[It’s what] you could dream of as a little kid: playing in the world’s most famous arena, packed house, and you have everybody there to support you,” Zuby Ejiofor said.
Again and again, Pitino has marveled at how the Red Storm overcome their frailties. After they shot 38% from the floor, went 6-for-18 from three-point range and were only 17-for-29 from the free-throw line, he said those numbers suggest “you’re losing by double digits.”
“I’ve never seen these type of statistics and this much winning ever,” he added. “It defies all statistical logic, but that tells you how good they are with effort.”
Pitino said that this success has happened despite some early-season issues inside the locker room — one involving Smith and another involving Simeon Wilcher — that people will see in the next episode of the Vice TV docuseries about the program’s season. He also said that while getting past that to reach their lofty place is an accomplishment, they can achieve so much more if they don’t lose the focus that’s brought them here.
“It takes time to build a team, and even with the injuries, this team never wavered with their work ethic,” Pitino said. “But they’re getting it now. They’ve arrived. The Garden is packed. They’re playing great. But . . . we could go in and lose to DePaul. You see [our] numbers, [so] it’s very easy to do.”
Entering Sunday, the Red Storm ranked 355th of 363 Division I teams in three-point shooting and 258th in free-throw shooting. And after capping a 10-game winning streak with a pair of wins over nationally ranked teams, St. John’s didn’t find its focus on defense quickly enough and lost Wednesday night to a Villanova team that made a number of shots as the shot clock expired.
Smith was declared out for the Creighton game on Friday but proved to Pitino that he was ready to play in a workout on Saturday. He looked close to the form he had before suffering a shoulder injury on Jan. 11, and Pitino said, “Without him, we don’t win this game.”
As last-place Seton Hall proved on Saturday night with a stunning 69-68 overtime win over Connecticut — the Pirates trailed by seven with 46 seconds left in regulation and by five with a minute left in overtime — any Big East team could be lying in wait for the Red Storm. And as the first-place team with a national ranking, St. John’s likely will be getting everyone’s best.
That’s exactly what is coming for the Red Storm in the NCAA Tournament and what Pitino wants them to understand as they pursue the Big East title. Fortunately for them, they have three things that play well in any venue and in any situation: defense, rebounding and effort.
“When you get in the NCAA Tournament . . . you could fail offensively,” he said, “but nothing can stand in your way, mentally, of playing great defense.”
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.
