St. John's exhibition win over Texas a 'quantum leap,' Rick Pitino says
St. John's Red Storm head coach Rick Pitino reacts in the first half of a preseason exhibition men’s basketball game against the Texas Longhorns at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
St. John’s sent a message to the rest of college basketball on Sunday afternoon: Doubt the Red Storm at your own risk.
During coach Rick Pitino’s first three seasons at St. John’s, we’ve seen that his teams have to travel a steep learning curve before becoming good. He brings in big-time talent, the new players need time to acclimate to one another and understand how he wants them to play, and then — usually after some setbacks — it clicks and they take off.
This St. John’s team appears to be racing up that curve.
The 13th-ranked Red Storm faced No. 7 Texas on Sunday in their final exhibition game before the regular season opens on Nov. 2, and it was something to behold. The team that needed four overtimes to beat Rutgers a week earlier dominated the Longhorns from start to finish, recording an 87-74 victory at the Garden.
“I felt that we had to make a quantum leap from the Rutgers game,” Pitino said. “I was on them constantly about certain things, and they made a quantum leap.”
The list of St. John’s players who performed well is long — and we will get to that — but there are some bigger-picture takeaways here: A team identity seems to be taking shape.
The Red Storm accept a challenge — and Texas certainly is one — and sprint into it head-on. They are confident they will be good and the players are going to do what it takes. And, though many were stars at previous stops, they know playing for the name on the front of the uniform, not the one on the back, is the key to success.
A week earlier, Pitino said the Red Storm weren’t ready for a measuring-stick game against the Longhorns. After Sunday’s performance, he believes that they are ready for the hardest games that lie ahead in the non-conference portion of the schedule: two or three games against nationally ranked foes in the Players Era Festival in Las Vegas plus a home game against No. 5 Arizona and a date with No. 20 Alabama in Birmingham.
“With this type of schedule — when you’re playing in Vegas . . . and you play Arizona early and you play against teams [where] you have to be ready — I think we can be ready now,” Pitino said. “I wasn’t sure after the Rutgers game, but now I think we can be ready. We’ve just got to cram.”
St. John’s made 12 of its first 16 shots as it raced to a 35-19 lead, with Tounde Yessoufou piling up 12 points en route to finishing with 23 points, five assists and five steals. The Red Storm cruised into halftime with an 18-point lead as Ian Jackson scored 14 of his 18 points.
Pitino lauded Jackson’s defense and called him “by far the best player on the floor today.”
Keyshawn Hall was virtually unstoppable around the basket, scoring 24 points, and point guard Quinn Ellis again was immaculate with seven assists and no turnovers in 34 minutes. In the last two exhibition games, Ellis has played 90 minutes with 16 assists and one turnover.
While some of these performances could have been anticipated, the big surprise was freshman Theo Edema. He had seven rebounds (four on the offensive glass) plus four points and a blocked shot in 12 minutes.
“He was big down the stretch,’’ Pitino said. “He wouldn’t let them come back in the game with his offensive rebounds.”
Said Yessoufou, “He still has more in him, but today I was very, very proud of him. I think we all were . . . We’re going to need him.”
St. John’s could have been expected to be lagging in terms of building team chemistry because the entire team wasn’t in place and practicing together until late August in what Pitino has called “a terrible summer.” However, the Red Storm were looking for each other from the get-go, recording 10 assists on 18 baskets before halftime, and worked together to pressure the ball the length of the court to negate Texas’ height advantage.
Pitino said he went after his players after the Rutgers exhibition and told them “you were not a team” and that aside from Ellis, “the rest of you guys don’t have a clue — all you want to do is score.” And the Red Storm took the lesson.
“They got the message and they were very unselfish,” Pitino said. “They moved the basketball well . . . They were brilliant.”
That’s high praise, and evidence of how quickly this group is traveling Pitino’s learning curve.
The Red Storm know that Sunday’s result will be noticed, but Hall was clear that “we have a long way to go.”
“If we match up skill-wise against anybody in the country — we probably have more skill — but it’s about the physical toughness and the little intangibles that are going to matter,” he said. “We’re going to be a great team as long as we just come together, [and] we’ve only been together probably a month . . . This was a good win to give us confidence.”
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.
