INDIANAPOLIS — Like your college basketball rare? Wednesday night was a feast.
Michigan State held on to first place in the Big Ten by beating Maryland with a 65-foot swisher by Tre Holloman. It was the Spartans’ first buzzer-beater in 15 years. Kentucky got by Oklahoma 83-82, with its last 18 points coming from Otega Oweh, who transferred to the Wildcats this season from Oklahoma. Oweh scored 28 points in the game, and the rest of the Kentucky starting lineup scored 29. Tre Johnson broke Kevin Durant’s old Texas freshman scoring record with 39 points, but the Longhorns lost anyway to Arkansas 86-81 in the first overtime game of the season for both teams.
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And then there’s St. John’s.
The last time the Red Storm stood at the top of a conference ladder, even sharing the space, was so long ago that they no longer have the same nickname. They were the Redmen in 1992, and it was the final year of the Lou Carnesecca legend. He retired with his fifth Big East title in 13 seasons. Who knew it’d be 33 years until the next one? College basketball’s big news in ’92 was Christian Laettner’s shot for Duke that beat Kentucky and the all-freshman starting lineup at Michigan the world knew as the Fab Five.
Now, the Fab Five are eligible for full AARP membership, and St. John’s is finally a champion again. Seven coaches had tried since 1992, and seven coaches had failed. Then Rick Pitino came to town at the age of 70. The latest chapter of the Red Storm Renaissance he’s created came Wednesday night with a 76-70 win at Butler, clinching at least a tie for the Big East title. They have two more games to make it an outright championship. St. John’s hasn’t done that in 40 years.
“No celebration,” guard RJ Luis Jr. said about the relatively placid post-win demeanor of the Red Storm. They did the job; they went back to the locker room and started thinking about the next game with Seton Hall. “We haven’t won anything yet. It feels good to have part of it clinched, but like Coach Pitino said, ‘I don’t want to share it, and the team doesn’t want to share it.’”
All this three months after Carnesecca died at the age of 99. A fairy tale tribute to him is afoot at St. John’s.
“I’m really, really proud of the guys. Really happy for them,” Pitino said. “I’m over-the-top happy for our student body . . . they’ve gotten behind the team in heavy numbers. So, to me, to see the students there, to see the subway alumni there, the alumni, they’re packing Madison Square Garden now for four or five times in a row. Madison Square Garden is 19,800 people. Last year, we had an average of 12,000, and we had to give away 2 or 3,000. I had to call every person I’ve ever known in life to bring 10 people.”
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With St. John’s fever rampant, Pitino wants to keep his foot on the gas. He didn’t pause long to celebrate Wednesday night either, not even the fact his 879th career win pulled him even with Dean Smith for seventh on the all-time list. Instead, he quickly popped in the tape of the last four minutes to see how his guys performed with the heat on since the first 36 minutes had been somewhat scratchy, not like last weekend’s 14-point sprint past Connecticut when St. John’s swept the season series with the Huskies for the first time in 25 years. He found one mistake: a Butler corner 3-pointer left unguarded.
“Everything else was perfect,” he said. “You’re not going to play a Connecticut-type game every night, especially off one day prep. But the guys dug deep like they have all year.”
One only needs to spend a few minutes with the Pitino bio to understand this, and it should be no surprise. It’s his second season with St. John’s, and that’s how long it has always taken him to conjure up some magic. A quick tour of the Pitino past:
In two years, he took Boston University from a program with seven losing records in eight seasons to 21 victories and an NIT bid.
In his second year at Providence, the Friars went from 17-14 to 25-9 and the Final Four.
He was 14-14 his first season at Kentucky, then 22-6 in his second as the Wildcats won the SEC.
In his second season at Louisville, the Cardinals jumped from 19-13 to 25-7.
Iona leaped from 12-6 to 25-8.
Now, here’s St. John’s in Pitino year two, and the Red Storm have become the beasts of the Big East. It finished 20-13 and fifth place in 2024. A year later, it’s 25-4 and ranked No. 7, the highest it’s been since 1991. Pitino became the first coach to win a conference title at five different schools. Come Selection Sunday, it will make him the first coach to lead six schools into the NCAA tournament.
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To understand how hard the team is to beat, look at its four losses: Baylor in overtime by one, Georgia by three, Creighton by one, Villanova by two. Four defeats, seven total points.
Or you can look at its numbers, especially on defense. St. John’s is No. 2 in the nation in defensive efficiency, according to KenPom, ahead even of Houston. It ranks eighth in blocks per game, 10th in turnovers forced, 15th in steals and 17th in field goal percentage defense.
Or you can listen to a recent victim.
“They’re elite. They’ve got a championship-level defense. They’ve got a championship-level offensive rebounding,” Connecticut’s Dan Hurley said after his Huskies committed 18 turnovers. “It’s disconcerting to start your possession just surviving to get the ball inbounds.”
“How their season goes from here is going to, in large part, come down to being able to make enough shots from the perimeter.”
Well, the Red Storm went 8-for-16 in 3-pointers in the first half against UConn, rolling up an 18-point lead. “If they shoot the ball like that,” Hurley said, “they’re going to be a problem for anyone.” They were 4-for-15 at Butler, so this win was more grunt work, but they can win that way, too. The defense occasionally leaked, but not when it counted at the end.
“We kind of let Coach Pitino down tonight defensively,” Luis said. “But like he says, ‘Good teams know how to win when they have a bad game.’”
So, the barriers of the past keep coming down for St. John’s. Next on the list is to clinch the Big East outright, then March. St. John’s hasn’t seen a Sweet 16 this century, and the only other Big East program with a similar dry spell is DePaul. “It feels like every game, we’re doing something new,” Luis said. Somewhere, Looie has to be loving this.
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