March Madness: St. John's draws Northern Iowa in 5-12 first-round matchup

The powerhouse performance by St. John’s this past week to win the Big East Tournament title did not pay off with a better NCAA Tournament seeding. The Red Storm may have won 19 of their last 20 games, but they still will open The Big Dance three time zones away.

When St. John’s was announced on Sunday as the No. 5 seed in a loaded East Regional with a first-round date against No. 12 Northern Iowa in San Diego, there may have been reasons to grumble. However, the Red Storm (28-6) and coach Rick Pitino’s only disappointment about Friday’s 7 p.m. matchup with the Missouri Valley Conference champion Panthers (23-12) at Viejas Arena was that it will be a hassle for their fans to attend.

“If you’re playing good basketball defensively, I think your confidence is there, and we’re a very confident basketball team right now,” Pitino said. “We’re not hanging our heads. I feel bad for our fans who can’t see us play, but that’s the only negative out of the whole thing.

“The past month, the pressure was enormous on us because of the teams we were playing, and they responded great in all the games. We’re playing good basketball and that’s the only thing that matters right now: It’s how we’re playing.”

Being placed in the East Regional means the 13th-ranked Red Storm will need to overcome an obstacle of storied programs, but a pair of wins would put them in comfortable surroundings for the Sweet 16: Georgetown’s home court, Capital One Arena.

The winner of the St. John’s-Northern Iowa game will face the winner of No. 4 Kansas — the program Red Storm star Zuby Ejiofor transferred from — and No. 13 Cal Baptist. If the chalk were to hold in the rest of the regional, No. 1 Duke, No. 2 UConn and No. 3 Michigan State would meet them in the nation’s capital.

As they did last season, the Red Storm won the Big East outright regular-season and tournament championships. In the 2025 NCAA Tournament, the Red Storm were rewarded with a No. 2 seed with the favorable location of Providence and they earned their first tournament win since 2000 by defeating Omaha before being upset by No. 10 seed Arkansas.

St. John’s this season played a far tougher non-conference schedule that included NCAA Tournament entries Alabama, Iowa State and Kentucky with the idea of being better prepared for the variety of styles they could encounter in an NCAA Tournament. The Red Storm lost all of them as they tumbled from a preseason No. 5 national ranking to unranked before beginning to resemble the team they were supposed to be for the past two months.

Whether those early-season games will pay dividends remains to be seen.

Asked about that, Pitino replied probably not, as the team had not jelled yet.

However, Ejiofor might see potential.

“We had a tough schedule in the non-conference this year, a lot of great opponents that obviously got us ready for this moment,” he said. “We battled through adversity, learned a lot of lessons about ourselves throughout those matchups, and we’re truly excited. You know, it’s going to be the first opportunity for [many] guys to feel the thrill of the NCAA Tournament. It’s just entirely different and the guys are ready. Nobody wants to lose in the first round.”

Since NCAA Tournament seeding began in 1985, the No. 5 tag has proved to be one of the most precarious. On 57 occasions — or 35.6% — the No. 12 team has pulled a first-round upset, according to the NCAA website.

In the past six tournaments, 10 of the 24 meetings of No. 5 versus No. 12 have resulted in an upset.

Asked about advancing deeper into the tournament than a year ago, Ejiofor said: “It would mean a lot. It is my last year here, so I want to experience winning. I haven’t gotten past the Round of 32 in my career, so it [could] be a great opportunity to get past the first weekend. But you’ve got to really stay focused. You’ve got to give everything.”

A number of the players who transferred to St. John’s for this season did so hoping to play in an NCAA Tournament after not doing it recently or ever.

“I came here to win games and to keep playing and still be playing here in March, so to have this opportunity, it’s amazing,” Stanford transfer Oziyah Sellers said. “I only experienced the tournament my freshman year [at Southern Cal] and I didn’t really play, so now I feel like a real part of it. This time is exciting, and I’m ready.”

Pitino, who is 55-22 in NCAA Tournament play, said the toughest part of a West Coast assignment typically is the travel. However, he said he took teams from the Eastern time zone “to Portland and Arizona and reached a Final Four.”

“It’s not ideal traveling to the West Coast, but you deal with it,” he said. “You just make the best of it.”

By Roger Rubin

roger.rubin@newsday.com@rogrubin

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.