St. John’s Basketball: 20th-Ranked Red Storm Might Be College Basketball’s Most Overlooked Squad

St John’s is a poor shooting team, barely making 30% of their attempts from three as a team, but their ability to generate easy baskets makes up for this. It starts with transition offense as a result of strong defense. Live ball turnovers are essential for St. John’s. In the halfcourt, they have several players who are tough to keep out of the lane, including transfer guard Kadary Richmond, leading scorer RJ Luis Jr., and former Kansas Jayhawk Zuby Ejiofor.

Pitino has five players averaging over one steal per game. Rebounding is also one of the team’s strong suits, as they are 4th in the country in total rebounding. St. John’s is a team more than willing to embrace a physical, scrappy game and grind out tough victories. Their play style and resilience is necessary in a league such as the Big East and will favor them come postseason time.

St. John’s is Building Another Strong Win Streak

In their recent romping against Seton Hall, St. John’s held the Pirates to 26.3% shooting from the field and only gave up 57 points. They also forced 18 turnovers and had 9 blocks, 5 of which were from Portuguese freshman Ruben Prey, who came off the bench with 14 impactful minutes. Luis led the team in scoring as per usual, with 24 points and 4 made threes. Luis recently spoke about the team’s mentality moving forward.

Myself, my teammates, and the whole coaching staff, we put in a ton of work since the summer. So, it feels great to be in first place, but the job’s not finished. We have to continue winning games, playing together, and having fun as a group.

Having fun has been an important part of the team’s success this year. On Monday, the squad arrived at Madison Square Garden to watch the New York Knicks defeat the Atlanta Hawks. Team activities like this are an important part of keeping themselves focused but also making sure they are enjoying the process together.

After their six-game win streak was snapped by Creighton, St. John’s is right back to building another one, with the Seton Hall win stretching their new streak to five games.

The Big East Crown is St. John’s to Lose

St. John’s currently leads the Big East, but there is still everything to play for down the stretch. With two games against Marquette, another two against Connecticut, and tough road rematches with the likes of Georgetown and Villanova, the Red Storm have a lot of big opportunities on their schedule. However, their first order of business is to continue and defend home court on Wednesday, when they welcome a Xavier Musketeers team to MSG who will be fired up after their big upset of Marquette at the weekend.