Roger Rubin: Another St. John's win over UConn will catapult Red Storm to new heights
St. John's Bryce Hopkins reacts after sinking a three-point basket against the UConn Huskies in the second half of a Big East men’s basketball game at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 6. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
St. John’s coach Rick Pitino can say the NCAA Tournament is all about the matchups and not the seeding. And the Red Storm players can talk about treating every game and every opponent the same. He may be right and they may have found a winning approach.
But the reality is that when 15th-ranked St. John’s meets No. 6 Connecticut at PeoplesBank Arena in Hartford at 7 p.m. on Wednesday night, it’s not going to be some ordinary game. And it’s not just because the Storm will be playing in a hostile environment that rivals any they’ve seen, or because first place in the Big East is on the line.
The Red Storm (22-5, 15-1) have a shot to significantly change their postseason outlook with a victory over the Huskies (25-3, 15-2).
St. John’s had the best returning player in the conference in Zuby Ejiofor and brought in the top-rated transfer class, according to 247sports.com. It opened the season ranked No. 5 in the nation. The Red Storm was considered a Final Four contender.
And then over the course of November and December, through four losses to teams that are or were nationally ranked, that shiny vision of the Storm got tarnished. For two months they kept tumbling down and out of the rankings and steadily stopped being seen as a team with Final Four potential. For nearly eight weeks now and through 13 straight wins, St. John’s has been restoring the luster. Nothing added more to it than the Feb. 6 win over UConn at the Garden.
However, with a win on Wednesday night, St. John’s could shine again. It would put them comfortably in the driver’s seat to repeat as Big East regular season champion and be the No. 1 seed in the Big East Tournament. And it would unlock the door to being a top four seed in the NCAA Tournament and the possibility of playing its first games in the Big Dance at a location near campus or at least in the same time zone.
When the NCAA Tournament selection committee last weekend revealed it’s up-to-the-moment top 16 seeds, St. John’s not only wasn’t on the list, at least two other programs were ahead of it. And as UConn coach Dan Hurley said in October at Big East Media Day, “You’re not going to a Final Four without a top four seeding.”
Asked Tuesday what a victory over UConn could do for St. John’s, Bryce Hopkins replied, “I think it’ll show that we’re serious and we’re real contenders. I feel like going into a great environment and a tough place to play [and] coming out on top, that’s going to show what this group is all about. It’s going to show our mental capacity. It’s going to show how hard we’re locked into the defensive end and the scouting report.”
When Pitino was asked about how a win might shape the Storm’s positioning and location in the NCAA Tournament, he was quick to point out that he’s had teams go far from an assortment of seedings.
“I really don’t care about any of it at all,” Pitino said Tuesday. “I just want to make the [NCAA] Tournament. I don’t care what seed we are, where we go, who we play. . . . I just want to continue to play great basketball the way we’re playing right now. That’s the most important thing to me. The rest of it is the future. The future will take care of itself on Selection Sunday.”
Repeating as Big East regular season champion has also been a stated goal since the Storm opened the season Nov. 3 at Carnesecca Arena with a ceremony to unveil its championship banners. Four players returned from that team, but as Dillon Mitchell explained, “when you see that you want to be a part of it.”
Hopkins never won a Big East championship in his three years at Providence before transferring for this season and he badly wants the experience.
“It will mean everything,” Hopkins said. “That was our goal at the start of the season, and we’re in a good position right now. We have the big game coming up [Wednesday] against UConn [and] that’s going to be a big game to figure out who’s going to probably win the conference. So it’s going to mean a lot to me to win a Big East Conference. I haven’t done it yet, and I hope this year is going to be the year.”
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.
