Roger Rubin: Pressure back on surging Red Storm. How will they respond?
St. John's head coach Rick Pitino against UConn at Madison Square Garden on Friday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
St. John’s showed all of its followers something very important Friday night. The 22nd-ranked Red Storm went into a game against No. 3 Connecticut that had the potential to change the arc of their season and rose up to meet the moment.
After the 81-72 takedown of the Huskies, they now have a signature win on their NCAA Tournament resume and a nine-game winning streak. They no longer are that ultra-talented team that hasn’t been able to win the big one.
When St. John’s opened the season as the No. 5-ranked team — overhyped or not — there were a lot of expectations. The Red Storm were seen as one of the elite and a Final Four contender. And when they embarked on one of the most rigorous non-conference schedules they’ve played in decades, they had something to lose.
And lose it they did. They lost it by coming up short in games against Alabama, Iowa State, Auburn and Kentucky. And when the Red Storm lost to last-place Providence in their third Big East game on Jan. 3 and coach Rick Pitino declared they had their “back to the wall early,” it might have felt as if they had nothing left to lose.
And whether the Red Storm had been growing all along or not, that’s when things started to turn around for them.
It was a group that had only things to gain and a Hall of Fame coach essentially telling them to play with no fear because he believed in their potential.
But maybe that’s how to play when one has nothing to lose. And the wins began piling up.
Now when one looks at the Red Storm, you can see a team that could get one of the 16 best seeds in the NCAA Tournament and a team that could repeat as the Big East champion.
St. John’s (18-5, 11-1) has something to lose again, and we are all about to see if the Red Storm handle it better today than they did in November.
That begins with Monday’s highly intriguing conference matchup against Xavier (12-11, 4-8) and coach Richard Pitino, Rick’s son, at the Garden. The Red Storm rallied from a huge second-half deficit to defeat the Musketeers in Cincinnati on Jan. 24 for Rick Pitino’s 900th career win.
A victory on Monday would give him No. 904 and move him past Roy Williams into sole possession of third place on the all-time list.
A lot has changed about the way St. John’s plays on the court during the past three months. It starts with a bunch of players new to the program — four new starters and six newcomers in the rotation — getting used to working together and executing Pitino’s system. But they also have addressed the assortment of flaws that have come up, from suspect team defense to poor rebounding to a lack of physicality. At one point or another, each looked like a weakness. Not so much anymore.
After a physical and hard-fought win at DePaul last Tuesday, the Red Storm’s development of a will to win stood front and center.
As Pitino said, “They have a great will to win, like last year’s team . . . They’re playing whatever style they have to play. They’re getting it done and winning.”
So St. John’s has grown in an assortment of ways as the season has progressed. But now it’s about handling a kind of pressure the Red Storm haven’t had since the dawn of the season.
Yes, they have faced other pressures and come through when games were at stake. They trailed Seton Hall by 15 in the second half at the Garden and came back to win by five.
They trailed by 16 in the second half of that Xavier win just a couple of weeks ago.
Now the pressure is about what could become of St. John’s season. Every game is a chance to improve its stature and NCAA Tournament positioning. But every game also is a chance to lose all it has gained during this winning streak.
We’re all about to see if the Red Storm handle having something to lose better than they did the first time.
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.
