St. John's Trio and Rick Pitino Talk Establishing Confidence, Building Through Transfer Portal and the Red Storm's Resur
Barely 12 hours after an emotional win vs Marquette, the head coach and three best players on the No. 12-ranked St. John’s Red Storm strut into their classic on-campus venue, Carnesecca Arena, and suit up for, as some of the other St. John’s athletes walking around say excitedly, “a SLAM cover shoot!”
The wild disconnect in the whole scene and story of St. John’s basketball is that to some of the old heads on the scene (*writer most definitely included), the old coach (72-year-old Rick Pitino) and even the players (in this case, the uber-talented and tough trio of Zuby Ejiofor, RJ Luis and Kadary Richmond), St. John’s is supposed to be good. Top-15? Favorites to win the league regular season? To win the conference tournament on the program’s other home court, Madison Square Garden? Expecting a deep run in the NCAA Tournament? What’s the big deal? This is one of the 10 winningest programs in the history of men’s DI hoops. The home of legends like Chris Mullin, Mark Jackson and Malik Sealy. Being in the mix for the aforementioned achievements feels like it should be commonplace.
And then you look at the banners on the far side of the court and the reality of things out here in Queens hits you in the face. The program’s last conference title was *squints* 2000! The last regular-season title was *shakes head in disbelief* 1992!! These players were literally not even alive for any of that.
We don’t need to re-litigate what has gone wrong with the Johnnies over the past quarter century—especially since they had enough dope players, compelling coaches and high-profile Garden games to somehow seem more relevant than they were, anyway—and will instead focus on the positive of this campaign: a well-coached crew of tough ballers who could probably blow your doors off with an offensive output if they weren’t so busy putting the clamps on you on defense to make the offense feel almost unnecessary.
https://www.slamonline.com/slam-university/digital-covers/st-johns-digital-cover-story-slamu/