March Madness: St. John's has chance to become a 'team for the ages'
Zuby Ejiofor and his St. John's teammates work out during practice day ahead of the NCAA men's basketball tournament on Thursday in San Diego, Calif. Credit: Getty Images/Sean M. Haffey
SAN DIEGO — Fair or not, NCAA Tournaments are the measuring stick for all college basketball programs. St. John’s has had many excellent seasons, but the reference points in any conversation about its great seasons — even among the diehards — stems from its tournament runs. The team that made the 1985 Final Four. The teams that reached the 1991 and 1999 Elite Eights.
The current squad is hoping to become part of those conversations, another of the program’s “teams for the ages,” in the stretch that lies ahead.
The No. 5-seeded Red Storm (28-6) will start it — and hope not to end it — in Friday’s East Regional first-round game against No. 12 Northern Iowa at Viejas Arena.
It looked as if it would be one of those reference-point seasons when St. John’s opened as the fifth-ranked team in the country. That vision began to fade with three high-profile November losses that cost it the “contender” label. It all but disappeared as January began with a home loss to Providence.
But the original vision of that team reappeared as St. John’s won 19 of its last 20 games and captured the Big East regular-season and tournament championships for the second straight year.
Potentially having a season that lives on forever is not lost on the Red Storm players.
Star center Zuby Ejiofor thought last year’s Red Storm could have been one of those teams for the ages. They were double champions and won 31 games but were upset by Arkansas in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
That team brought plenty of delight for St. John’s fans. But it’s hard to envision it being referenced 27 or 41 years from now.
“We have an opportunity to make something special out of this year,” Ejiofor said. “Obviously, we already did some exciting things in the regular season and in the Big East Tournament. But now we can just put all that in the past and really focus in on making a run. It’s six games, [but] one game at a time.”
St. John’s coach Rick Pitino has long understood all of that because he’s been on a bunch of special teams. This is his 25th NCAA Tournament. He’s been to seven Final Fours and won a pair of national championship games.
He’s been building this St. John’s unit to be one of the program’s teams for the ages, looking ahead to what it could become. But the time for that is over. There is no more looking ahead.
“I like a lot of what I’ve seen, the way they always seem to answer the bell,” he said while his team conducted a shootaround Thursday. “Of course the way they played in the Big East Tournament I liked. But I look more to that game against Villanova and how they responded to the challenge.”
He’s speaking of the game after St. John’s 32-point loss to Connecticut in Hartford on Feb. 25. The Red Storm played third-place Villanova in the next game and beat the NCAA Tournament-bound Wildcats by 32.
“[When] they played against Villanova, because they were embarrassed and it became ‘what are you going to do about it?’ ” Pitino said. “They came out and played great. And when they were getting ready to play UConn again [in the Big East Tournament final], they were all ‘time to take care of business.’ And they took care of business.”
Pitino seemed surprisingly loose for someone who was taking a team into a game he’s dreading. His team likes to play fast and Northern Iowa plays one of the slowest tempos in the nation. He said his Louisville teams faced the Ben Jacobson-coached Panthers twice and “we were life-and-death to beat them both times.”
Asked about his demeanor, he replied, “I should be uptight? I think what you try to do is make sure your players are not uptight. It’s going to be a slow-down game — probably very close — and you want to make sure they’re not tight.”
They didn’t look tight on Thursday. They looked confident.
“We’ve treated every game this year like a tournament game,” Dillon Mitchell said. “Obviously, it’s a little bit different now. You lose a game now [and] you’re going home. But that’s just the type of mindset that we’ve had throughout the season.”
Ejiofor said at the dawn of the season that the team had big goals such as repeating as the Big East champion, but also going further than last year’s team. That would mean at least a trip to the Sweet 16. The last St. John’s team to do that — it reach the Elite Eight, too — is one of those teams for the ages.
“It would mean a lot,” he said of achieving that goal. “It would say that St. John’s is trending in the right direction . . . But it’s one final opportunity for me and a few of my teammates. We’re trying to make the best of this year, and we’ve already made some special things, but we have one more goal in mind.”
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.
