Roger Rubin: Rick Pitino wants St. John's to honor Zuby Ejiofor with a banner in the rafters
St. John's Red Storm forward Zuby Ejiofor gestures after sinking a three-point basket against Villanova at Madison Square Garden on Saturday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
St. John’s star center Zuby Ejiofor will play his final regular-season home game in a Red Storm uniform on Tuesday night at the Garden. The 6-9 center, who might be the most significant player to suit up for St. John’s in the past quarter-century, will be honored at 6:35 p.m. in a “Senior Day” ceremony at center court along with the other players who are finishing their careers with the 18th-ranked Red Storm.
Coach Rick Pitino has a vision for the send-off he wants for Ejiofor, but the day before the event, it didn’t sound as if he will see anything as grand as his mental picture for it.
Pitino would like to see Ejiofor honored in a symbolic way, something akin to having his number retired, but that was not in the current plans.
Pitino said that since he arrived, he’s been pursuing the school administration to honor the all-time basketball greats with rafter banners at Carnesecca Arena bearing their names (in some cases, players have shared the same number), but to no avail.
“I’ve been trying to get St. John’s to retire names forever,” he said. “It was supposed to be done this year . . . two players from the Sixties, two players from the Seventies [and] two players from the Eighties to start. Then two every year after that. It’s just as most things do here, [it] went by the wayside. It didn’t get done . . . There’ll be nothing done because nobody ever does anything here.
“I don’t say that negatively. It’s just a weakness of the athletic department: They don’t get anything done when they should get things done.”
The school did confer “Basketball Legacy Honors” on 10 players and coaches in 2006, and there are rafter banners at Carnesecca marking that confirmation. But no one has joined them in the two decades since. And St. John’s has plenty of history to draw on.
“I totally agree that we want to honor players with banners, but it has just taken some time to work through some specifics to get it started and plan for the future,” St. John’s AD Ed Kull said. “We had hoped to get it moving this year, simply were unable to get it done in the manner we wanted.”
Pitino’s feelings about this probably are amplified by the juxtaposition of Tuesday night’s ceremonies with last Saturday’s at No. 4 Connecticut, where Alex Karaban’s number was retired before the Huskies’ win over Seton Hall.
Pitino also would like to see The World’s Most Famous Arena with a near-capacity crowd to embrace Ejiofor. However, he said Monday afternoon that it was shaping up to be the Red Storm’s smallest Garden crowd of the season — about 13,000 — and he appeared confounded by that.
“People have to come out for Zuby for what he’s given to the university,” he said. “People have to come out. If you’re a real fan, you come out to honor the seniors. No excuses.”
Some New Yorkers work long hours. Others socialize over dinner or drinks before a game. Some deal with a complex commute. So it’s rare to have everyone in their seats for a 7 p.m. tip-off — even with the Red Storm (23-6, 16-2) on a quest to repeat as regular-season champions and, in this case, facing longtime rival Georgetown (13-16, 5-13). And the ceremony to celebrate Ejiofor and Co. starts even earlier.
Both Pitino and Ejiofor said they will try not to get teary during the ceremony. As we have told you in this space, they have the rarest of player-coach bonds. But Pitino sees Ejiofor as being in a special class that must be respected by all as an individual player who changed the arc of an entire program.
Pitino drew comparisons with Jamal Mashburn, the New York star who joined him at Kentucky while it still was on probation after a scandal and helped it reach a Final Four, and with Billy Donovan, the Rockville Centre kid who carried once-listing Providence to a Final Four in Pitino’s second season with the Friars.
“The same thing is true of Zuby. This [program] was dead,” Pitino said. “Zuby played behind Joel [Soriano] for one year and, like Mashburn helped turn around Kentucky, Zuby helped the turnaround here at St John’s. [It’s] culture-wise as well as on the court.”
Asked how Ejiofor changed the culture, Pitino replied, “Unselfish, just everything about him. [It’s] never about Zuby, always about St John’s, always about the team, never about self. [It’s] always about winning. [He’s] never moody [and] always disappointed when things don’t go well, but willing to fight through it.”
Everything Pitino said about Ejiofor rings true. That he’s a high-quality player shows through all the time. That he’s a high-quality individual is on display often, as recently as last Wednesday, when he was accountable before reporters and cameras and tried to take the blame for St. John’s awful loss to UConn in Hartford.
It would be nice to see Ejiofor feted as Pitino believes would be appropriate. Maybe they can do it when his NBA team is in town.
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.
