St. John's Off To San Diego For NCAA Tournament

 

The scene at the buzzer when St. John's beat UConn in the Big East Tournament Championship Game Saturday night. Photo by Jason Schott.

The St. John's Red Storm, the Big East Regular Season and Tournament Champions - are off to San Diego as the fifth seed in the East Regional of the NCAA Tournament.

Their first game will be on Friday against 12th-seeded Northern Iowa, with tip off at 7:10 p.m. eastern time on CBS.

St. John's won the Big East Tournament on Saturday night when they beat Connecticut, 72-52, in a dominant performance in which they led wire-to-wire.

The Red Storm won all three of their games by double-digits, and they have now qualified for consecutive NCAA Tournaments for the first time since 1999-2000.

They became the first school in Big East history to win back-to-back outright regular season and tournament champions.

Even though UConn blew a nearly season-long edge to the regular season crown outright to St. John's, and falling to them in the Tournmanent after going 1-1 against them in the regular season, they are a second-seed in the East, opening against 15-seed Furman in - wait for it - Philadelphia.

There is no other way to put this than insanity that UConn is seeded higher all because they won a few more games in November than St. John's, like what about the fact St. John's won the two championships at stake in the Big East Conference? 

A real intriguing point is it's possible that St. John's and UConn could face each other for a fourth time this season in the Elite Eight.

Northern Iowa won the Missouri Valley Conference as a six-seed in that tournament, beating Illinois Chicago, which was a five-seed, 84-69 in the championship game. They are 22-12 on the season, and they were 11-9 in MVC play.

St. John's Head Coach Rick Pitino will be making his 25th NCAA Tournament appearance at his sixth different school. He holds a 55-22 all-tome record, and has made it to three Final Fours at three different schools, and won the National Championship in 1996 with Kentucky and in 2013 at Louisville.

On Sunday, St. John's held their Selection Sunday party at Carnesecca Arena, and Carnesecca said of being a five-seed and going to San Diego, "I thought half the staff thought we were a 4 and I thought we were a 5, so I'm not surprised at the seeding. The first opponent that we'll play is very tough, and if you get to the second round, you're going to - you'll have a packed house, but it'll be all Kansas fans. They will pack the place, and we'll have maybe a few hundred people. That's about it, but that's the breaks in the game. I've been to Portland and Arizona and went to a Final Four. It's not ideal traveling to the West Coast, but you deal with it and you, you just make the best of it."

On his initial feelings on facing Northern Iowa, "We'll study them tonight. Just by their scores, they play everybody tough. They have a senior-led team. They have four guys in double figures. They shoot a very high percentage from three. They don't turn it over a whole lot. They get an average of 15 assists per game."