St. John's late rally earns Rick Pitino's respect despite tough loss
St. John's head coach Rick Pitino looks on against the Marquette Golden Eagles at Madison Square Garden on Saturday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
This time Rick Pitino didn’t want to lash out at the world or threaten to do himself harm.
That was the case a week earlier when St. John’s suffered a one-point loss to then-No. 22 Creighton in Omaha, Nebraska, after a missed shot at the buzzer.
The Hall of Fame coach had a very different feeling on Saturday after the Red Storm lost to 17th-ranked Marquette, 73-72, before 12,214 at the Garden. They had three chances to tie the score or take the lead in the final 38.9 seconds, including a three-pointer by Daniss Jenkins at the buzzer.
Highly criticized by Pitino for their lack of effort in Wednesday’s embarrassing loss at Seton Hall — a game in which they were the victims of a 28-0 run — the Red Storm scratched and clawed their way back from a 13-point deficit in the final 6:20 against Marquette. And they did it without third-leading scorer Jordan Dingle, out with an illness, and Nahiem Alleyne, who left the game with an ankle sprain.
“When we lost to Creighton, I thought you could see how unhappy I was because there are no moral victories, but tonight there was a moral victory,” Pitino said. “We were undermanned and I thought our guys showed amazing character down the stretch to fight back against a very seasoned ballclub.”
Pitino seems to have entered the next phase of trying to mold 14 players who played for 10 different teams last season into a team capable of contending for the Big East championship, reaching the NCAA Tournament and making a run in it. The first phase was getting offensive-minded players to not only play defense but play his style of defense. In this phase, he wants to get the attitude and effort required to win, something they had neither of in the no-show loss at Seton Hall.
Pitino has a colorful way of making clear how necessary those two components are.
“There are no great players on this team,” he said. “There are a lot of good players on this team that, if they aspire to be great, greatness is in their grasp. That’s what we’ve got to get.
“Tonight, with six minutes to go in the game, they went after greatness . . . If you aspire to greatness even though you are good, greatness is in your grasp . . . I really liked the guts and determination to win that game. It was a quantum leap the way we finished that game.”
St. John’s has faced three nationally ranked teams and lost all three games by a total of six points (the other loss was by four points at now-No. 1 Connecticut on Dec. 23). He has mentioned how avoiding small failures along the way — a boxout, an errant pass, being a step too far off a shooter — can prevent games from coming down to the final possessions. Maybe buffing those out is a later phase.
“Every coach gets discouraged with a loss, but understand these are three teams you could rank in the Top 10 in the nation,” Pitino said of UConn, Creighton and Marquette. “We’re rebuilding, and in all three games we . . . not should have won, but could have won. Then we played Villanova at Villanova and [won] for the first time in three decades.”
St. John’s started conference play the best it has in more than a dozen years, but this stretch of games shaped up to be fairly brutal when the schedule came out. The four aforementioned teams were expected to be the elite in the conference and Seton Hall — which lost to Creighton in triple overtime on Saturday — has been the sensation of the Big East season.
One could look to the final five weeks and maybe see a bunch of wins coming with four games against Big East cellar-dwellars DePaul and Georgetown and a road game at Butler. Of course, after Georgetown lost a one-pointer on the road at Xavier on Friday night, there is no telling where that program will be when its matchups with the Red Storm arrive.
“January, if you looked at the schedule, you said, ‘That’s going to be a rough month for them,’ ” Pitino said. “You have your points in the schedule where it’s going to be rough, then you pick it up . . . You have to judge a team on the whole body of work.
“It’s easy to get discouraged with that Seton Hall game, [but] I think we’re making strides. I can’t tell you where we’ll be at the end. I just think we’re making strides.”
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.
