Roger Rubin: It's on the few St. John's returning players to answer Rick Pitino and establish a 'winning culture'
St. John's coach Rick Pitino and Red Storm guard Ian Jackson. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
For a college basketball program to be a sustained success, there has to be a winning culture.
First it must be built. Then it needs to be handed down from one team to the next.
St. John’s clearly had it the past two seasons. In each, the Red Storm won at least 30 games and captured Big East regular-season and tournament championships. And as the 13th-ranked Red Storm head into Sunday’s noon exhibition game against No. 7 Texas at the Garden — their final tuneup before the Nov. 2 season opener — coach Rick Pitino hasn’t seen it in this team.
“They are not getting the winning culture,” Pitino said in a news conference via Zoom on Friday afternoon. “If I had one criticism of this basketball team, it’s they don’t understand a winning culture . . . They are not consumed with all the little fundamentals that make a great team.”
Though mostly role players, Ruben Prey and Lefteris Liotopoulos were on both 30-win teams. Ian Jackson was a major contributor a year ago, and the players elected him a co-captain with Babacar Sane for this season.
The departures of Big East Player of the Year Zuby Ejiofor and Iona transfer Sadiku Ibine Ayo have created a leadership void. It’s on those three returning juniors — Liotopoulos, Prey and Jackson — to instill it until it takes hold in the rest of the squad.
Ejiofor, now with the Atlanta Hawks, was about getting better every day — even in the simplest fundamentals and tiniest nuances — because he understood that was what it takes to win. So did Ibine Ayo. And Jackson, Prey and Liotopoulos followed.
When St. John’s made the run to its first NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 in 27 years, Jackson and Prey played well because they bought into the culture. And now it’s on them to pass it on.
Pitino was adamant that he isn’t down on the team. He says he loves the players, sees the potential and believes they will reach it despite playing together even fewer days than last year’s team had before its final exhibition against Michigan.
Still, the intangibles that Ejiofor brought to the table — the toughness, effort and attention to detail — are needed right now even more than his 16.3 points, 7.3 rebounds and 3.5 assists per game. And no one was better at communicating Pitino’s message than Ibine Ayo.
“Ian’s captain certainly [and] Babacar’s captain because everybody loves him, but Ian’s not locked in . . . [He’s] just a great person who wants to win,” Pitino said. “Ruben is a great person who wants to win [but] he doesn’t talk. Lefty is a great person who wants to win [but] he doesn’t talk. It’s just not there [and] we need to build it.”
Many of the players Pitino added for this season are older and have played professionally overseas or for several seasons in college, but he doesn’t see it. British point guard Quinn Ellis can be a leader on the floor, but he isn’t vocal. Auburn transfer Keyshawn Hall already played four seasons, but Pitino pointed out that the Tigers weren’t in the NCAA Tournament. Baylor transfer Tounde Yessoufou could be an NBA lottery pick, but Pitino pointed out the Bears’ 13th-place finish in the Big 12 last season.
“They’re not coming from a winning environment,’’ he said, “and that’s something that’s missing.”
Ejiofor also was the biggest reason that Red Storm opponents often remarked that their physicality was hard to match. Dillon Mitchell, now with the Celtics, and Bryce Hopkins, now with the Nuggets, also bought into the physical brand of basketball Pitino wanted and Ejiofor embodied.
Pitino is waiting for that to develop. Though St. John’s hasn’t shot well in either exhibition game, he said this is a very good shooting team that is loaded with scorers. But at this point, he envisions only Hall embracing the idea of filling the physicality void.
“We’re not a very physical team right now . . . We don’t have that,” he said. “They’ve got to become more physical. I think Keyshawn’s definitely willing to be that, to play more physical. He’s one person that will buy into physical play.”
It’s not beyond Pitino to under-promise and then over-deliver.
After the Red Storm needed four overtimes to win Sunday’s exhibition against Rutgers, he suggested that the Longhorns probably would win by 40 points but that he had a goal of improving the team in one week to a place where it loses by only 30.
Ejiofor was the lone returner in the starting five at this time last season, and Pitino had his presence and Ibine Ayo’s experience there to help pull together a bunch of new players. There are 10 new guys this time; Jackson and Prey are starters and Liotopoulos is in the rotation.
They watched Ejiofor indoctrinate the newcomers with his way to win. They heard Ibine Ayo communicate Pitino’s lessons. Now those three must carry it on and do as they did.
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.
