Roger Rubin: With UConn on horizon, Red Storm must not overlook DePaul
St. John's Red Storm head coach Rick Pitino directs his players during a timeout against the Butler Bulldogs in the second half of a Big East men’s basketball game at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday, Jan. 28. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
CHICAGO — St. John’s continued its climb back up the national rankings on Monday when it jumped three spots to No. 22 in the latest AP poll. The Red Storm’s ascent is just another log on the fire that’s glowing hot for Friday’s much-anticipated matchup with No. 3 Connecticut at the Garden. That contest will be the biggest test of the season to date for the Red Storm.
There will be a test of a very different nature for St. John’s between now and then: Tuesday’s 8 p.m. Big East game against DePaul at Wintrust Arena.
The hype around the date with UConn is all around the Red Storm players. As Sadiku Ibine Ayo explained before Monday’s practice, “Everybody on campus right now, everybody, is looking to playing that game.”
And that’s precisely what the Red Storm (16-5, 9-1) cannot afford to do.
The idea of the “trap game’’ seems cliche these days, but it’s a real thing. All the buzz is about St. John’s meeting the Huskies, a game that will be played in prime time before a national television audience in which first place in the conference is in play. There is no buzz surrounding the trip to Chicago to face the Blue Demons (12-10, 4-7).
While the Red Storm largely are a veteran bunch and should be good at maintaining their focus, only the four returning players from last season have the poise that comes from winning a conference championship.
And the Red Storm already have had some moments when they failed to rise to an occasion. The losses to Auburn and Providence come to mind, and they desperately want the kind of victory that will speak to the NCAA Tournament selection committee when it’s time to seed the field of 68.
The opportunity to accomplish something like that could distract players, but Ibine Ayo and Dylan Darling made it sound as if coach Rick Pitino isn’t leaving room for that. In a moment of clear understatement, Darling said, “He reminded us we need this DePaul game.”
The Blue Demons have long lingered at the bottom of the conference but have been better performers this season. They are 4-1 against Big East foes at Wintrust Arena, with the loss coming to UConn, and suffered a heartbreaking road loss to Xavier on a buzzer-beater this past weekend.
So DePaul demands St. John’s full attention.
“We know the type of team that we are, that if we don’t come in ready to play, we’re going to lose the game,” Ibine Ayo said. “If we’re not ready and focusing in practice and on the scouting report, you can be beaten every single night.”
In the first weeks of the season, as St. John’s stumbled in one big non-conference game after another and tumbled from its No. 5 preseason ranking to being unranked, Ibine Ayo suggested the team was searching for an identity. It has one now that he described as “the grit and refusing to lose.”
That identity has come to the surface during the Red Storm’s current seven-game winning streak. The run contains four road victories and also includes overcoming a 15-point deficit with 16 minutes left against Seton Hall at the Garden and a 16-point deficit with 17 minutes to play at Xavier.
“Those games with the comebacks have been huge, just because we needed those,” Darling said. “We hadn’t gotten one of those and now having two, we know that we’re capable of doing that against two dramatically different teams.
“We’ve got a lot of different ways we can beat you, and we think we can, I guess, beat anybody.”
True as that may be, the Red Storm shouldn’t be thinking about anybody aside from DePaul right now. With something as big as Friday’s game in the offing and everything St. John’s wants to accomplish in it, losing on Tuesday is not an option.
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.
