Roger Rubin: Rick Pitino's talent-laden St. John's team shows clouds, but there are plenty of positive signs
St. John's Red Storm head coach Rick Pitino covers his face with his hands during the second half of a preseason game against the Rutgers Scarlet Knights at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
The same plot line you know. An even better ending.
The sample size is awfully small. St. John’s has played only a pair of exhibition games, but it is starting to look as if this team is traveling a path that is similar to coach Rick Pitino’s first three Red Storm squads.
In the offseason, there is massive roster turnover. Then the players spend the early stretches of the season acclimating to playing the Hall of Famer’s style and getting used to playing together. Eventually things click and St. John’s becomes a team no one wants to tangle with.
On Sunday at the Garden, that seemed to be the arc the Red Storm have begun to travel.
They faced a clearly inferior Rutgers team and needed four overtimes to beat the Scarlet Knights, 104-99.
St. John’s trailed by 20 in the first minute of the second half, showed some real pressing acumen to roar back and take a six-point lead, and then did as many good things as bad things in the final six minutes of regulation and the four overtimes.
“Fundamentally, we are not a good basketball team,” Pitino said. “We make a lot of mistakes due to the fact they haven’t played together . . . Our defense was better in the second half, but we’ve got a long way to go.”
Looking ahead at the loaded Players Era Festival in Las Vegas in late November and the high-profile matchup with Arizona at the Garden on Dec. 5, Pitino said, “I’m not sure we’re going to be ready.”
So why is the suggestion here that this season could have a better ending?
Pitino’s fourth Red Storm team has his most talented roster yet and is ahead of where previous teams were at this stage of the season, and he has built their schedule better.
To review, in Pitino’s second season, the Red Storm captured the conference title and notched their first NCAA Tournament win since 2000. In his third season, they repeated as the conference champion and made the Sweet 16 for the first time in 27 years.
Quinn Ellis is the best starting point guard Pitino has had, and we mean no offense to Daniss Jenkins, who crafted himself into an NBA player. Ellis, a former Euro League pro, said he’s still learning the college game, but he played 56 minutes, had only one turnover and recorded 13 points, nine assists, eight rebounds and four blocks.
And he has scorers aplenty around him, including Ian Jackson (24 points), Keyshawn Hall (24), Tounde Yessoufou (15) and Babacar Sane (13).
Pitino calls them “good offensive players and not good defensive players,” but this group looked better defensively at this point then his previous Red Storm teams did. Not yet great, but this group already is pressing and trapping, as Pitino’s best teams do. A year ago, St. John’s didn’t do that much until December.
Asked what was most challenging about facing St. John’s, Rutgers center Christian Gurdak replied, “Definitely their press . . . They were really pressuring us, came out [after halftime] fighting and were [very] aggressive on defense.”
Pitino put monster opponents early on last season’s schedule, but they come later this season. The Red Storm have five games before Vegas and don’t play Arizona or at Alabama until the second month.
“Come January we’ll be a much better basketball team,” Pitino said.
With maybe a better ending, even better than last season’s Sweet 16 team.
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.
