In the span of one week last February, Rick Pitino called his debut season at St. John’s “the most unenjoyable experience” of his career — this coming after a loss to Seton Hall — and then, sitting behind a rickety table inside Madison Square Garden following a loss to eventual national champion Connecticut, matter-of-factly described the Red Storm as “not a great basketball team,” deficient in shooting, defense, rebounding and general athletic ability.
“Outside of that, we’re pretty good,” Pitino said.
Anger, frustration and impatience were bubbling toward the surface — directed at his team, his own recruiting efforts and the new landscape of college basketball, where the frenzy of annual player movement had made it “tough to build a program.’
At Boston University, Providence, Kentucky, Louisville and Iona, the 72-year-old Pitino constructed a case for being counted among the finest coaches in the history of the sport. If not his biggest test, the reconstruction of St. John’s promised to be the most unique project of his career: Could Pitino weather these seismic changes to the NCAA model and return another Division I blueblood to national prominence?
One year later, that question has been answered with authority.
The Red Storm won an unshared Big East regular-season championship for the first time since 1985. Won the Big East tournament for the first time since 2000. Won 30 games for the first time since 1986. Lost four games by a combined seven points. Along the way, St. John’s swept and demoralized the Huskies, highlighting the night-and-day difference from Pitino’s debut.
‘This team will be remembered for a long time at St. John’s,’ he said.
St. John’s has reversed more than just one uneven season. A generation of minimal results had moved the program off the national radar and toward the bottom of the Big East. Once one of college basketball’s trendiest teams, the Red Storm had become easy to forget. Now, with the NCAA Tournament around the corner, they’ve become impossible to ignore.
Pitino “is the mastermind behind all of this,” said junior guard RJ Luis, the team’s top scorer at 18.4 points per game. “I mean, it’s truly special. I’m at a loss for words.”
Transfers drive St. John’s turnaround
The No. 2 seed Red Storm will meet No. 15 Nebraska-Omaha on Thursday in the opening round of the West region as one of the hottest teams in the tournament and a legitimate contender to reach the program’s third Final Four and first in 40 years.
This type of rapid turnaround isn’t foreign for Pitino, who coached Providence to the national semifinals in his second season, had Kentucky in the Elite Eight in the program’s first year off NCAA sanctions and led Louisville to the Final Four in his fourth season.
But the reshaping of the Red Storm has been electrified by the same environment Pitino criticized one year ago: the transfer-portal-driven realm of rampant player movement that has helped to immediately flip a mismatched roster.
Five players from last year’s team exhausted their eligibility, including borderline NBA prospects in guard Daniss Jenkins and forward Joel Soriano. Another three players transferred out of the program. In their place came four freshmen and several hugely impactful transfers, led by former Seton Hall guard Kadary Richmond, whom Pitino called “the best guard in the nation.”
Richmond has transformed the pace and flow of the Red Storm’s offense and defense, averaging a box-score-filling 12.7 points, 6.4 rebounds, 5.4 assists and 2.1 steals per game. Former Mississippi State, Georgia Tech and Utah guard Deivon Smith is averaging 9.4 points and 4.8 rebounds per game. Another key transfer, former North Texas guard Aaron Scott, is scoring 8.5 points per game and averaging 1.5 steals per game.
“He’s a big-time player,” Pitino said of Richmond. “Rebounds, points, steals, he always makes big plays.”
Overall, all but two of the nine players averaging at least seven minutes per game since the start of Big East play — true freshman forward Ruben Prey and sophomore guard Simeon Wilcher are the exceptions — began their college careers elsewhere.
‘Last year we had 14 new players. This year we have four new starters,’ said Pitino. ‘The thing that’s difficult for coaches is to get players connected offensively, defensively and bonded, because it takes time.’
The results of this roster turnover have been remarkable, especially on the defensive end of the court.
St. John’s has soared to 31st nationally and first in the Big East in scoring at 65.9 points per game, a 147-spot leap in the Division I rankings from last season. The Red Storm rank 17th in the country in field-goal defense, 17th in steals per game and 10th in turnovers forced per game. This aggressive defense, long a Pitino hallmark, has helped bolster an offense that averaged 78.2 points per game against opponents in this year’s Big East tournament.
“It’s the defense that turns into offense that makes us go,” Pitino said.
Is Pitino the best coach in NCAA history?
He was the first of two coaches to lead three programs to the Final Four; the other, new Arkansas coach and longtime foil John Calipari, could match up with Pitino and St. John’s in the second round should the No. 10 Razorbacks upend No. 7 Kansas.
Pitino is already the only coach to win national championships at two schools and the only coach to lead six programs to the tournament. He holds a career record of 884-310, including 123 wins and three losses vacated by the NCAA for Louisville’s participation in the pay-for-play scandal involving executives at Adidas. With a mark of 54-21 in tournament action, Pitino’s winning percentage of 72 percent is the third-highest among all active coaches.
This is his ninth 30-win season and his 19th team to crack the top eight of The Associated Press poll, and just the third to do so when entering the regular season unranked, joining Kentucky in 1990-91 and Louisville in 2002-3.
And while a huge chunk of his college success has come at historically elite programs, Pitino has never directly inherited a winner. The six programs Pitino has coached went a combined 76-105 in the year before his arrival. Most notably, Kentucky was burdened with a two-year postseason ban and scholarship restrictions due to NCAA violations that occurred under his predecessor.
While he has pushed back on questions about his legacy and place in the all-time-great conversation, Pitino’s latest turnaround at St. John’s reinforces an incontrovertible fact that had come to be overshadowed by his off-court scandals and failed NBA forays: No coach in college basketball history has won this much at this many different stops.
“Humility is a big part of my life right now,” he said. “It wasn’t always that way. I don’t believe in redemption. I believe in humility. I believe in living what I call the precious present, a gift that we all get.”
Star-studded West region will test St. John’s
To reach the Final Four, St. John’s will have to navigate a deep region topped by No. 1 Florida and several powerhouse programs and teams: Kansas, Arkansas, No. 3 Texas Tech, No. 4 Maryland, No. 5 Memphis and No. 6 Missouri. Also in the West are the No. 8 Huskies, now almost two years removed from the program’s last postseason loss.
That there is still a degree of uncertainty over how the Red Storm will fare against this caliber of competition stems from a weaker regular-season strength of schedule than other prime contenders for the national championship.
St. John’s went 6-4 in games against Quad 1 competition, playing the fewest such games and posting the fewest wins of any team on the tournament’s top four lines. Four of these Quad 1 wins came in the final month of the regular season, two in the Big East tournament.
But these recent wins illustrate why St. John’s could be a difficult matchup for any potential opponent in this year’s bracket.
Trailing Creighton 41-38 with 12:53 to play in the Big East championship, the Red Storm made 14 field goals in a row over the next seven minutes to take a 70-55 lead, eventually connecting on 17 of their final 19 attempts and 23-of-32 overall in the second half.
“They’ve had a remarkable year,” Creighton coach Greg McDermott said. “Dominated our league and pretty much saved their best for this conference tournament. They just wear into you over time.”
One night earlier, in the semifinals against Marquette, St. John’s forced 17 turnovers against the Golden Eagles’ six assists. Down 24-9 early, the Red Storm outscored Marquette 44-26 in the second half to win 79-63.
“I think they’re about as dangerous as anyone,” Marquette coach Shaka Smart said. “What you have seen from their team is they’ve gotten better and better on the offensive end as the year has gone on because they’ve got guys that have really, really bought into their roles.”
But no result from this season speaks to the program’s resurgence more than a pair of flip-the-script takedowns of the two-time defending national champions. The second, an 89-75 win at MSG last month, saw St. John’s go 8 of 16 from 3-point range in the first half to stun the Huskies, who had stuffed the lane and dared the Red Storm to connect from deep.
“You’ve got to pick your poison,” UConn coach Dan Hurley said. “If they shoot the ball like that from the perimeter, they’re going to be a problem for anyone.”
That theory will be put to the test this weekend and beyond, should St. John’s carry over a red-hot close to the regular season. The Red Storm have lost just once this calendar year, by two points at Villanova in early February. Like the teams at each of Pitino’s previous stops, they’re clearly improving with every passing game, every passing week — and like his championship-winning teams at Kentucky and Louisville, the Red Storm are capable of cutting down the nets in San Antonio early next month.
“I think we can win every game,” said Deivon Smith. “Even the games we lost, we’re hard on ourselves because we’re only losing by a point or so. It’s a super-special team, making history almost every single game.”