Roger Rubin: St. John's has gone from work-in-progress to Big East leaders
St. John's' Zuby Ejiofor drives to the basket against Marquette during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game on Wednesday in Milwaukee. Credit: AP/Aaron Gash
Several players have gotten the star turn during St. John’s current 12-game winning streak. Different members of the 17th-ranked Red Storm have been the leading scorer or the difference-maker, the strong finisher or the big-play maker.
Two things have been growing through all 12, though: toughness and poise.
We saw that again on Wednesday night when the Red Storm (21-5, 14-1 Big East) beat Marquette, 76-70, in Milwaukee to overtake No. 6 Connecticut — which had been beaten by visiting Creighton earlier in the evening — atop the conference standings.
Ian Jackson provided one of many examples of that toughness when he returned from a first-half ankle sprain — one that has him in a walking boot and ruled out for Saturday’s noon matchup with Creighton (14-13, 8-8) at the Garden — to play another 13 minutes.
And the poise? It was there when St. John’s rallied from a seven-point deficit early in the second half and again when the Golden Eagles trimmed the margin to two with 27.5 seconds to play.
Red Storm coach Rick Pitino and the players said these admirable qualities were forged in the disappointment of the big-game losses in the first two months of the season and the hurt from being criticized as they tumbled from a preseason No. 5 national ranking to unranked.
That fall included high-profile losses to Alabama, Iowa State, Auburn and Kentucky.
“We learned how to stay together early on in the year when we were taking losses and figuring out what we’ve got to do to stay together,” Dillon Mitchell said. “Now, when we have times during the games where we’re down or we’re not playing our best, we stay together and we go out there and fight together. But it’s all from the beginning of the year and how those experiences have helped us.”
“When you compete against great competition, you find out what’s lacking and you find out what you did well,” Pitino said Friday before the team’s practice at the Garden. “So when you play against . . . those type of teams [we played], you learn the mistakes that you made against great competition and then you adjust.”
So much for thinking nothing good ever comes out of losing.
Thought to be one of the nation’s most disappointing teams as recently as a Jan. 3 upset loss to Providence, St. John’s has been riding its blossoming toughness and poise to become the hottest high-major program in the country.
After Wednesday’s win, Bryce Hopkins described the journey the Red Storm have been traveling as “building a brotherhood.” Zuby Ejiofor echoed that sentiment Friday when he said, “Winning together, it builds connectivity with each other and it’s good to see.”
St. John’s enters Saturday’s game having spent two full days atop the Big East standings. UConn had been tied or alone on top since conference play kicked off until the Bluejays exposed the Huskies’ defensive weaknesses in the upset.
The Red Storm will meet UConn in a big game on Wednesday, but that result ended any chance of them seeing Creighton as a “trap game.”
“[Leading] feels good, but it ain’t going to mean [anything] if we come [Saturday] and lose,” Mitchell said. “Then none of it really matters. So just keep on building . . . [and] continuing this win streak.”
“When you experience losing, it’s not a great feeling,” Ejiofor said. “And then you get to experience winning at this level and you get obsessed with it. Seeing . . . everything we’ve been through — all the adversity that we’ve been through to start the season, all the narratives that were said about us — and just to see us overcome all that, it’s been truly special.”
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.
