March Madness: St. John's Rick Pitino will have Red Storm prepared for Kansas
St. John's Rick Pitino talks with his team during a timeout against Northern Iowa during the second half in the first round of the NCAA college basketball tournament on Friday in San Diego. Credit: AP/Mark J. Terrill
SAN DIEGO — There is coaching a team to the NCAA Tournament and then there is winning in it.
There are plenty of coaches who have done the first.
Not as many have done the second.
St. John’s Rick Pitino is the rare combination of both.
Though the Hall of Famer had never coached a game at Viejas Arena before the No. 5 Red Storm overwhelmed No. 12 Northern Iowa, 79-53, on Friday evening in an East Regional first-round game, he looked very loose and right at home when his team worked out there on Thursday.
He was casual when he spoke to Newsday during the workout and even joked about how exciting the NCAA Tournament is by pointing out: “We just watched a Siena team that was using only five players put on a performance that could have beaten Duke — it’s very exciting.”
That sounds more like the words one might hear coming out of a wide-eyed Red Storm fan watching all the games in a living room on Long Island than from a 73-year-old raised in Bayville who has won more college basketball games in history than all but three others.
Pitino has grown to feel enormously confident about this St. John’s team, which will face fourth-seeded Kansas — Zuby Ejiofor’s former school — in a second-round game at 5:15 p.m. ET on Sunday in hopes of earning its first trip to the Sweet 16 since 1999. Kansas beat California Baptist, 68-60, late Friday night.
Pitino said Thursday that “preparation is the key to playing in the NCAA Tournament — you’ve got to be ready for everything.”
And on Friday the Red Storm looked exceptionally prepared, just as they have in every game since the regular season ended with them as the repeat outright Big East champion.
In the Big East Tournament last week, the Red Storm overpowered three opponents, including Connecticut in the title game. They opened leads of 9-0, 8-0 and 10-0 in the three games and never trailed in repeating as conference tournament champion.
And there they were again on Friday night against a Northern Iowa squad that was hoping to drag the high-scoring and athletic Red Storm into quicksand with its molasses pace. St. John’s (29-6) never gave the Panthers a chance to do their thing, scoring the first 13 points of the game, opening a 21-point lead before halftime and rolling to victory.
“We watched about 12 films of these guys and the players watched about five, and we knew what we had to do to win this game,” Pitino said.
Asked if these brilliant starts are more about the mental preparation or about how much the players want it in their hearts, he replied, “I think it’s both.”
Pitino should have an idea about that. He has a team in the NCAA Tournament for the 25th time in his career and is 56-22 in March Madness.
That win total is surpassed only by Michigan State’s Tom Izzo (60), Arkansas’ John Calipari (60) and Kansas’ Bill Self (58).
Pitino had taken three different programs to a total of seven Final Fours and won two national championship games.
“Getting prepared with Coach Pitino is really something, but it’s tuning things up,” Dillon Mitchell said. “We know what we do well and what we have to do to win. One of the things we’ve figured out is it’s all about how we start, set the tone for the game, be the first ones to punch. That’s how we’ve been trying to play the past couple games, and we’ve had great results.
“You do your preparation and you know what the other team is going to try to do, but the overriding thing is the intensity you bring,” he added. “When we started bad in games, I think it’s because we weren’t mentally ready, and now we are.”
The Red Storm sure looked it in the first half against the Panthers (23-13). St. John’s made seven of its 10 three-pointers, was plus-9 on the boards, allowed Northern Iowa to make only one of its first 10 shots and held the Panthers to 37% shooting with five turnovers in the first 20 minutes.
“They played a fantastic first half. . . . [It] was a brilliant performance on offense, brilliant performance on defense,” Pitino said.
This next time is going to be a different story, both from the Big East Tournament and Friday’s game.
There won’t be the familiarity with the opponent they had last weekend in winning the conference tournament and downing Connecticut for the second time in three tries. They won’t have time to watch 12 game films.
“Now you only have one day to prepare, so it changes,” Pitino said. “We’ve got to watch this [Kansas-California Baptist] game and we’ve got to really cram hard. Preparation is the key to our defense.”
Pitino knows how to do this because he’s done it so many times before. And the players have developed what Mitchell called “the correct mental intensity.”
It’s a good bet the Red Storm will be ready when Sunday comes.
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.
