March Madness: St. John's next chapter in team saga has right man for job in Rick Pitino
St. John's head coach Rick Pitino looks on during a practice session ahead of the Sweet 16 in the East Regional of the NCAA men's basketball tournament on Thursday in Washington, D.C. Credit: Getty Images/Patrick Smith
WASHINGTON — St. John’s will be looking to write an NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 success story when it faces Duke on Friday night. The Red Storm have the right author to pen it.
Coach Rick Pitino has taken 13 teams from three schools — Providence, Kentucky and Louisville — into Sweet 16 games, and his record in those is 12-1. Give Pitino a handful of days to get his team ready for a game and it seems he can make it a winner.
How does he do it?
“By the time his guys get into those Sweet 16 games, they pretty much know everything about the other team,” Kevin Keatts, a Pitino assistant on the 2013 national champion (later vacated) and 2012 Final Four Louisville teams, told Newsday in a phone interview. “Give him that time [between rounds] and he’ll have it: Here are their tendencies, here are the plays they run, here are their out-of-bounds plays, here’s what they do against a [full-court] press.
“And it’s also things about every individual: This guy is a driver and favors this hand, this guy is a shooter and these are his spots, this is a guy you have to block out.
“He’s has that success because he does such a great job of just preparing the guys for what they may see.”
Keatts has been looking forward to seeing the fifth-seeded Red Storm (30-6) face the overall No. 1 seed Blue Devils (34-2) in the 7:10 p.m. East Regional semifinal at Capital One Arena.
“I think it’s the best of the [eight] games,” said Keatts, who coached North Carolina State — with Long Island point guard Michael O’Connell — to the 2024 Final Four. “They’re two of the hottest teams that are playing. St. John’s has won 21 out of the last 22 games. Duke has two losses. There’s just so many great things about them. Both were regular-season champions in their conference and both of them are tournament champions. And they aren’t just two of the hottest teams in the tournament, they’re two of the hardest to play.”
Throughout the season, the Red Storm players have referenced the practices, how hard they have to compete in them. And Pitino often makes decisions about playing time based on how well a player practices, which provides plenty of motivation. Keatts explained that the players get better because those practices aren’t just the starting five playing the last five on the bench.
“Plenty of coaches practice ‘five-on-zero,’ but he always has good versus good,” Keatts said. “One thing you see in every Rick Pitino-coached team is how hard the players play. It starts with what he demands and that [extends] into practices.”
Every St. John’s opponent is scouted by one of Pitino’s assistant coaches, and then there is the film work that he and everyone on the staff do. This seemed to be of paramount importance before the first-round win over Northern Iowa in San Diego. The Panthers played a slow style that increased their chances of success by cutting down the number of possessions in a game. He said his assistants had watched UNI a dozen times and that he had seen film on it at least eight times.
“A lot of coaches leave most of the scouting to their assistants,” Keatts said. “[Pitino] has assistants who do that work — and I am sure do it well — but he is doing it along with them. They are going to give a scouting report, but he is already going to know everything, too.”
When Pitino was asked by Newsday in San Diego if he believes there has been a key to all of his March Madness success — he is 57-22, has made seven Final Fours and has won two national titles — he replied, “Preparation is the key to playing in the NCAA Tournament. You’ve got to be ready for everything.”
St. John’s got a third crack at Connecticut — which is the No. 2 seed in the East Regional and will face No. 3 Michigan State in the other semifinal — when they squared off in the Big East Tournament title game, and St. John’s looked exceptionally prepared. The teams had split the regular-season series, with the Red Storm getting humiliated in a 32-point loss in Hartford, but St. John’s rolled to a 20-point win for the crown.
“Now there is no preparing for a game where the ball just won’t go in the hole — that happens — but his teams will never be surprised by an [opponent],” Keatts said. “They’re not going to get something unexpected. But the other team? He may give them something they aren’t used to seeing [in film study].”
Certainly that was true in San Diego when St. John’s hoisted up 29 and 35 three-pointers in its two wins. Each set a Red Storm season high.
So what is Keatts expecting when St. John’s takes the floor against Duke?
“The [hallmark] of a Pitino-coached team is that it keeps getting better, and St. John’s is playing as well as anyone still playing,” he said. “You know they’ll be prepared and he will have them confident. But he has a great basketball mind . . . I want to see how he attacks Duke.”
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.
