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| St. John's celebrates winning the Big East Tournament Saturday night at Madison Square Garden. Photo by Jason Schott. |
The St. John’s Red Storm is the second seed in the West Regional in the NCAA Championship.
Their quest for a National Championship begins when they take on No. 15 Omaha on Thursday in Providence, with tip-off at 9:45 p.m.
St. John’s, if they win, would then face off against the winner of No. 7 Kansas-No. 10 Arkansas.
St. John’s Head Coach Rick Pitino is now the first Division I Men’s Basketball Coach to take six teams to the NCAA Tournament - Boston University, Providence, Kentucky, Louisville, Iona, and now, St. John’s.
The No. 2 seed is the highest for St. John’s since 2000, the last time they won the Big East Tournament before they ended the 25-year drought on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, as they cruised past the Creighton Bluejays, 82-66.
This is their first appearance in the tournament since 2019, and since they won the conference tournament, they received an automatic bid.
This was St. John’s 30th win of the season, giving them an overall record of 30-4. It is just the third time they have hit the 30-win plateau in a season, with the first two instances the 31 wins they won in the 1984-85 and 85-86 seasons.
The Red Storm also won the Big East Regular Season championship after they went 18-2 in conference play.
Pitino, in his press conference Saturday night, said of their goals, “We had three phases we set out, and phase one was to win the regular Big East Championship. Phase two gets very difficult because you can't embrace what you are accomplishing. You just have to keep getting better. We accomplished that, and phase three was to make the tournament and go as far as we could possibly go.”
PITINO SELECTION SUNDAY PRESS CONFERENCE: St. John's Head Coach Rick Pitino spoke to the media on the campus after the Selection Sunday show, and here's what he had to say:
On playing the opening round in Providence: “I know the players are all excited. The fans are excited. So, it's a great opening. I'm excited that we'll start studying as soon as I leave you.”
On bringing St. John’s back to the national stage: “It means quite a bit. Last year, I didn't have a lot of people at the meeting. I wasn't sure we were going to go. So, this year, we planned the party. It was great. We thought we'd be a two-seed. That was terrific. So, we're looking forward to all of this.”
On preparing for the NCAA Tournament: “I mean, just prepare it like you would any other game. We put a lot of pressure on them with the Marquette game, as I said earlier, and we put a lot of pressure on the guys with the BIG EAST Tournament. We played that as if it was an NCAA game. I kept telling him that. Four minutes to go in the Marquette game, I said, ‘Alright, you're in the first round of the NCAA, it’s survive and advance in these last four minutes.’ And I felt that was necessary because of their lack of playoff experience. And then we did the same thing with the Butler and Marquette and last night’s game.”
On if there is a certain thing about what he does in the NCAA Tournament that helps his teams advance: “When you have a lot of experience, you learn what not to do, as much as what to do. There are a lot of things that you must understand, that you must understand that you have to stay focused. This is a time of year when everybody is filling out brackets, everybody's talking about it, and you have to understand the focus of every little thing that goes into an NCAA game.”
On when he knew this team was going to mesh well enough to be a two-seed: “I don't think I ever knew. I never really thought about it. Just kept taking it game-by-game, not taking anything for granted. Just never knew anything about it. I watched our guys get better, young guys get better. Watch RJ [Luis Jr.] get better, but we had an incredible number of injuries, more so than a lot of teams I've ever coached, a lot of players out for the season. So, we had to, on the fly, keep changing, and we were resilient. So, I knew we were tough. I knew we were resilient. Did not know if we'd win the BIG EAST Regular Season and Tournament Championship.”
On the Providence region: “I'm just going to focus on Omaha. I've lost in the first round before. So, we'll just focus on that.”
On if it’s a factor that the team had success in Providence this season: “I don't think it's effective. I think you look for things like that that just don't come into play. You know, they just don't. It's nice and convenient that we only have to travel for three hours by bus. But then, if we ever advance and move on, we are going towards San Francisco.”
On how he is mentally preparing this team: “Well, what you do is you start getting ready with your staff and then you try to make the changes necessary so the other team is not prepared for you. You make subtle changes, you make big changes and then you focus on the defense of the teams you want to play.”
On how much time is spent on what your team is going to do versus combating what the other team is going to do: “I think you work on both. You work on what's going to be successful against their defense, what you have to stay away from because they defended very well. And then you have to take away everything that they do well. You rely on your pressure. If they're a great three-point shooting team, you've got to extend your defense.”
On his bench depth heading into the NCAA Tournament: “I think we are not afraid to put any of the guys in the game. I think I intentionally made sure they got experience in the last four or five games that we played, because in the NCAA Tournament, we may need them.”
On how playing in the Big East Tournament helped prepare the team for the NCAA Tournament: “Well, we mentally said it, it was the first round. We started with the Marquette game. Because of the lack of experience we had, we kept talking about that. This is the first round. This is the second round. This is the Sweet 16. And we played it that way, just to get them that type of experience. If you're going to play in a conference tournament, you want to get to the finals and you want to win it because if you lose it, you're tired. Our players are not tired right now. They're on a high, so you want to win that. I hate getting knocked out in the first round, which hasn't happened. You get knocked out of the first round, you have a whole week and you can get stale.”
On how soon the team will look at film: “We're going to start watching as soon as I leave you. In the past, I've watched a lot of games thinking of who I thought we could possibly play, Robert Morris, so I watched them play. I did not watch Omaha, so we'll start watching them as soon as I leave you.”
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