Roger Rubin: Why this year's St. John's team is shaping up to be the best in the Rick Pitino era
St. John's Red Storm guard Quinn Ellis gestures to his teammates in the first half of a preseason exhibition men’s basketball game against the Texas Longhorns at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 25, 2026. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
It almost doesn’t matter from what angle one chooses to view St. John’s as it embarks on the 2026-27 college basketball season. This is the best team coach Rick Pitino has assembled since the Hall of Famer took on the resurrection project 3½ years ago.
Maybe one views St. John’s just through the lens of personnel. At the most premium position — point guard — there is 6-4 Quinn Ellis, whom Pitino called the smartest of all the great ones he’s coached. He added that Ellis “has a total feel of the game, sees things that most players don’t see when he comes down the court.”
There are three players capable of scoring 20 points on any night in 6-4 guard Ian Jackson, 6-5 forward Tounde Yessoufou and 6-7 forward Keyshawn Hall. And there is 6-7 Babacar Sane, an exceptional but raw talent who either will start or be the sixth man and ultimately might be the best player on the team.
Maybe one considers the Red Storm from an experience standpoint. This is an older team, with seven players who are at least 23. It has five other returning players who have played at least one season in Pitino’s system. Several have competed in professional leagues overseas.
Or maybe one should just consider how good No. 13 St. John’s looked in a 13-point exhibition win over No. 7 Texas last weekend at the Garden. In opening an 18-point halftime lead, the Red Storm shot 62%, used a full-court press en route to scoring 14 points off 10 turnovers and were plus-6 on the backboards.
Pitino was largely unimpressed with his team’s play after halftime, but that earlier stretch suggests that St. John’s is more advanced at this time of the season than any of Pitino’s previous three at the school. And his Red Storm teams always play better in February and March.
Even Pitino had to acknowledge that those first 20 minutes would grade a B-plus. “To play at a B-plus level [is] pretty strong,’’ he said, “and that was a strong performance in the first half.”
Does this mean that a program that made its first NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 in 27 years is going to win a national championship? No.
Does it mean it will go to the Final Four? No one knows.
But even Pitino — citing the qualities he’s seen in this team — rules nothing out.
“You can’t tell [in] the future how good you’ll be, but the sky’s the limit when you’ve got people who all want to win, who all want to get better, all playing for the right reasons, all rooting for each other,” Pitino said. “It’s a unique group of guys. I’m very, very lucky.”
There are a few things worth bearing in mind when one considers the season ahead, some that come every year.
Every player isn’t going to play well in every game. There will be shooting slumps, opposing players who are incredibly hard to guard, bigger foes. The Big East is vastly improved from top to bottom, and going 18-2 in conference play for a third straight year is hard to envision. And the Red Storm might not be quick to pick up the new defenses and strategies that Pitino always adds along the way.
But this group has the depth to overcome these things. There are plenty of scoring options. There are returning players who have seen the defenses and strategies that are coming. Everyone knows that big man Ruben Prey can score and defend, and though Pitino wants more rebounding from him, the Red Storm rebound well at the other four positions.
Co-captain Jackson sees a group that played well last weekend but is more focused on doing everything a little better.
“We’re all right — obviously it’s super-early,” he said Friday. “We have a lot of things that we’ve got to clean up . . . We didn’t do the same [good] things we did in the first half throughout the whole game . . . Finish the game and complete the wins — that’s what we’ve got to get better at along with everything else.”
But when looking at the months ahead, the thing to come back to is the notion that St. John’s could be ahead of schedule on its path to again being the team no one wants to face at season’s end.
The Red Storm didn’t fare well in non-conference play a year ago and, though they thrived in Big East play, ended up a No. 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament and had a tougher path to getting past the Sweet 16. Given that this team is more advanced and that it has three more weeks before it has to play a ranked opponent, St. John’s could play better earlier and put themselves in position for a better seeding.
And that could be the last thing that needs to fall in place for this to be one of St. John’s very best seasons.
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.
