Rick Pitino on St. John's best chance of being successful: 'Keeping Dylan Darling healthy'
St. John's men's basketball players Dylan Darling and Zuby Ejiofor. Credit: Getty Images/Ian Maule
Scorers tend to get most of the headlines, but that’s not what Rick Pitino is looking for. The St. John’s coach wants wins, and he knows it’s going to take a lot more to get them than just putting the ball in the basket.
The Red Storm weren’t a great scoring team last season, and so Pitino and his staff sought players who were great shooters and scorers in the transfer portal. They were successful enough to bring in the top-ranked transfer class in the country, according to 247sports.com. But for the team to start winning the high-profile games, the Hall of Fame coach needs a number of those elite players to put the score-first mindset aside.
He cited point guard Dylan Darling and forward Zuby Ejiofor as the two who exhibit the mentality he is looking for from everyone.
No. 23 St. John’s needs to come around after missing out on its three biggest opportunities to enhance its NCAA Tournament profile: losses to No. 10 Iowa State, No. 12 Alabama and No. 20 Auburn.
Asked about Darling on Thursday as St. John’s prepared for Saturday night’s game against Ole Miss at the Garden, Pitino replied: “All the players on our team are really talented, but their motives are not to make other people better. When [Darling] steps on the court, he’s trying to make everybody better, and that’s something we need now. Zuby does it [too].
“All the [other] guys that are starting, they’re focused on scoring,” he added, referring to Oziyah Sellers, Bryce Hopkins and the tandem of Ian Jackson and Joson Sanon. “They’re not focused on making players better.”
It led Pitino to say something that probably no one would have imagined at the start of this season.
“[With] this basketball team, I think the key is keeping Dylan Darling healthy,” he said.
The Idaho State transfer was sidelined with a calf strain for the loss to Alabama in the second game of the season. Last week at the Players Era Festival in Las Vegas, he was limited to seven minutes against Auburn by a leg injury suffered in warm-ups and fouled out late in the one-point loss to Iowa State. He was healthy for the Ole Miss game.
Pitino’s endorsement was surprisingly strong for a player who, entering play Saturday, was averaging 4.5 points and 3.0 assists and shooting 36%, including 1-for-13 on three-point attempts. However, the team was outscoring opponents by 100 points in his 110 minutes played before the Nov. 26 loss to Auburn.
“I’m off to a little bit of a slower start than I would have liked, but I don’t feel like I’m playing horrible basketball,” Darling said. “I just feel like I’ve either been hurt or I’ve been in foul trouble . . . I haven’t been able to shoot the ball great to start the season, but that’s something I’m confident will flip.”
Jackson and Sanon have been under the microscope because the two sophomores are considered the Red Storm players with the highest ceilings, but Pitino believes their stats don’t tell the entire story.
Jackson was averaging 12.0 points in 18.1 minutes, but also had 1.1 assists and 2.0 turnovers. Sanon was averaging 10.1 points in 23.1 minutes, but also had 0.9 assists and 1.1 turnovers.
“I just think their mindset is to score the ball, and at college, you’ve got to play great defense,” Pitino said. “You can’t be holding the team back defensively. You have to rebound the ball and you have to pass the ball. And they’re making great strides in that area.”
Pitino suggested that some of the team’s best progress has been made in the nine days since St. John’s went 1-2 in Las Vegas.
“We’ve made great strides this week with practice, especially with Ian and Joson,” he said. “They’re learning to do more than just score the basketball: their passing, their rebounding, their defense have all gotten better from practice. That’s exciting.”
St. John’s may have fallen short in its three biggest non-conference opportunities to date, but if the team can adopt the philosophy Pitino is looking for, a lot could change. Beating the Rebels and 18th-ranked Kentucky in Atlanta on Dec. 20 — both, like Alabama and Auburn, are from the tough SEC — along with its win over Baylor could leave the Red Storm looking pretty strong when the NCAA Tournament approaches.
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.
