Roger Rubin: St. John's dominant win over Iona shows Red Storm are getting up to speed
St. John's head coach Rick Pitino reacts during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game against Iona, Sunday, Nov. 8, 2026, in New York. Credit: AP/Seth Wenig
The race is on, and now only about two weeks remain before St. John’s will go head-to-head with college basketball’s elite at the Players Era Festival in Las Vegas during Thanksgiving week.
After an offseason in which coach Rick Pitino brought in nearly a dozen new players, the 13th-ranked Red Storm were going to need some time to develop team chemistry. That the full roster wasn’t in place and on campus practicing until late August meant that the process would need to happen at an accelerated pace.
It’s been only three exhibition games and a pair of regular-season contests, but the Red Storm are looking more and more as if they’re capable of catching up and being ready for the big challenges that lie ahead.
St. John’s clearly took strides in the last week, as evidenced by its performance on Sunday against mid-major Iona. The Red Storm seized control of the game early behind a very developed full-court press and great performances from their signature players in a 104-65 non-conference win before 13,753 at the Garden.
One week after sprinting to an early 18-point lead against Monmouth and coming away with only a 13-point victory, St. John’s (2-0) was a vastly superior team. The press was the Red Storm’s biggest weapon as they went up by 17 points in less than seven minutes and took a 54-23 halftime lead, with 24 points resulting from 15 forced turnovers.
“We just talked about going from the last game [and] what we did well [to] really playing a great half — every four minutes, really getting better,” Pitino said.
“When you watch TV, some of these teams are in great form right now, and we want to obviously start to play catch-up offensively and defensively. And we did tonight.”
Tounde Yessoufou looked capable of being the NBA lottery pick he is striving to be with 23 points, 9-for-14 shooting (including four three-pointers), seven rebounds and three steals. Ian Jackson finished with 17 points and 7-for-12 shooting. Quinn Ellis again was the brilliant conductor, orchestrating the Red Storm attack and contributing seven points, 11 assists, five rebounds, three steals and a single turnover.
Keyshawn Hall scored 13 points, Szambor Maronka had 12 and Lefteris Liotopoulos added 10 for St. John’s, which shot 55% for the game (including 46% on three-pointers), totaled nine steals and committed only four turnovers.
This past week, top-ranked Florida beat No. 14 Miami, No. 4 Connecticut defeated No. 16 Michigan and No. 22 UCLA beat No. 5 Arizona. Soon the Red Storm will be playing in games like those, and improvements like the ones they made Sunday are the only way to be prepared for them.
There were plenty of moments to thrill the Red Storm fans, but the biggest might have been before the game. St. John’s aired a tribute video for Sadiku Ibine Ayo, who was a co-captain for St. John’s as it won consecutive Big East championships the previous two years before transferring back to Iona for a chance at a starring role.
The crowd rose with a thunderous cheer. “It was amazing,” Ibine Ayo said. “I’m always the one always telling my teammates after every game to clap to the fans, and they know how wherever I see a St. John’s fan . . . I tell them we appreciate what they’re doing. That’s the give-back . . . to show me that ‘we appreciate what you did over here at St. John’s.’ ”
A withering full-court press has always been a feature of Pitino’s best teams, and the one everyone is seeing is very advanced for this time of year. The 2025-26 team was excellent at stopping an inbounds play. This version is good at that, and suffocating to an offense that does manage to get the ball inbounds.
“The thing we do better this year than last year is press,” Pitino said. “That’s the one thing that’s way ahead of all the other things we do. We shared the basketball [better], but we’ve worked on our press really hard because it creates scoring opportunities [and] gets us on the break. Ian and Tunde and Quinn are great up close, great denying the basketball.”
Said Jackson, “I’m glad that we’re getting some success with it early on, disrupting teams, causing some turnovers, getting some extra possessions. We’re just doing it at a high level. We’re understanding how to take the ball away, when to trap, when to go, how to get steals.”
Yessoufou, who set Baylor’s freshman scoring record last season and arrived with a reputation of being an offense-oriented player, is savoring playing Pitino’s defense.
“The whole team this year is committed to do the hard, you know, the hard work [and] . . . you don’t want to let your brother down by doing some little mistake,” he said. “We’re all committed to press as much as possible and make sure the other team turns it over as much as possible.”
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.
