Rick Pitino has seen 'frailties' on Red Storm and wants to see grit
St. John's Red Storm head coach Rick Pitino reacts in the first half of a Big East men’s basketball game against the Providence Friars at Madison Square Garden on Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
St. John’s faces a crucial week. It’s time to find out what the Red Storm are really made of.
In the last two months, St. John’s had four shots to put a signature win on its NCAA Tournament resume and couldn’t beat any of the teams that either are or have been nationally ranked.
Nevertheless, there was a saving grace as the Red Storm started 2026 — at least they didn’t have a bad loss.
That’s no longer the case. They disintegrated in the final three minutes on Saturday at the Garden and fell to Providence, 77-71, a Quad 3 loss.
With Big East road games at Butler on Tuesday and Creighton on Saturday, the week ahead looked challenging when the schedule was released. Now it feels critical. And it didn’t help that St. John’s (9-5, 2-1), after being ranked No. 5 in the AP preseason poll, didn’t get a single Top 25 vote in Monday’s poll.
Red Storm coach Rick Pitino tends to choose his words very carefully, and if there was one that stood out above all the rest in discussing the Red Storm at his postgame news conference on Saturday, it was “frailties.”
“We have high hopes,” Pitino said. “But what I’m noticing right now is a team that has a lot of frailties.”
If that word doesn’t land with his players, doesn’t stir them to look inside for the best and most competitive version of themselves, maybe things are even worse than they appear. No basketball player, no basketball team, wants to be described that way.
Frailties? That doesn’t suggest that the Red Storm have flaws, things missing from their game like the outside shooting from a year ago. It suggests weakness. It suggests fragility. It suggests a lack of substance.
And we can’t be certain, but maybe that’s correct. It’s been curious that, before Saturday, Pitino spoke of his team with mostly words of encouragement, praising the players’ character, their unselfishness and their willingness to learn and improve.
It’s an interesting contrast with the things he said during last season.
Early in 2024-25, Pitino never hesitated to criticize. We often heard that missed shots “deflated” the players and bled into porous defense. He said the players needed to understand that a missed shot was not the end of a possession but a chance for an offensive rebound. And that helped the Red Storm become one of the best offensive rebounding teams in the country.
Pitino has a reputation as a great motivator. Perhaps he sees that this team wouldn’t respond to criticism like that one.
Butler (10-5, 1-3) and Creighton (9-6, 3-1) may not have impressive records, but these two road contests are Quad 1 games and the Red Storm are 1-4 in such affairs.
Butler has a signature non-conference win against 23rd-ranked Virginia and its conference losses — at home to Villanova and on the road against UConn and Creighton — are nothing to be ashamed of. Creighton is one defensive rebound and two points shy of a 4-0 conference start.
It’s entirely plausible that St. John’s could come out on the other side of this week in a three-game losing streak and be reduced in the moment to “bubble team” status.
So what version of the Red Storm will we get this week? They were competitive from start to finish in the losses to Alabama and Iowa State and the win over Baylor. They withered in the second half of losses to Auburn, Kentucky and Providence.
Outside of Big East Player of the Week Zuby Ejiofor, whose effort and performance against the Friars was noticeably better than the rest of his teammates, the Red Storm didn’t show much grit in the face of adversity.
It’s curious. It could be argued that their other four losses were to teams that are simply better. Providence definitely isn’t.
Forgive one more set of comparisons with the 2024-25 Red Storm. Kadary Richmond and Deivon Smith were steady hands on the wheel who could steer the team through close finishes. In the biggest moments, RJ Luis Jr. took the big shots and Ejiofor finished when the shots didn’t fall.
Ejiofor remains, but this season, who will be the steady hand? Who will take the big shot?
St. John’s needs answers to these questions, and very, very soon.
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.
