St. John’s University’s basketball team is heading to San Diego. They are a No. 5 seed in the East region, and will play Northern Iowa in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on Friday.<\/p>\n
Head coach Rick Pitino, who brought the team back to prominence, is getting ready to study Northern Iowa’s basketball team.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
St. John\u2019s University\u2019s basketball team is heading to San Diego.\u00a0They are a No. 5 seed in the East region, and will play Northern Iowa in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on Friday
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The Johnnies won the Big East tournament on Saturday night, becoming back-to-back champions, beating the University of Connecticut in front of a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden
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St. John’s is hoping to go further than they did during last year\u2019s NCAA Tournament, when they were knocked out after round two<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know nothing about them now except statistics, and statistics don’t always tell the story, so we got to study them,\u201d Pitino said at a press conference following the announcement. \u201cRight now, we’re playing good basketball, and that’s the most important thing. Not who you\u2019re playing, but make sure you’re playing good basketball.”<\/p>\n
The players are planning to give it everything they’ve got.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery opponent that you play in the tournament is never going to be easy, like coach has said, and our biggest thing is how we prepare each and every day and how we approach each day,\u201d St. John’s forward Zuby Ejiofor said.<\/p>\n
The Johnnies won the Big East tournament on Saturday night, becoming back-to-back champions, beating the University of Connecticut in front of a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n
After the game, the Empire State Building was lit up in red and white to honor their win. They are heading into March Madness with a lot of momentum, and fans are pumped.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be here, to be a part of it, it sends chills throughout my body,” Katie Donohoe, a student and president of Redzone at St. John\u2019s, told NY1. “It’s something I’m going to remember for the rest of my life.”<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen St. John’s is good, the city is behind them wholeheartedly,\u201d Billy Rabold, an alumni and super fan, added. “People that have graduated 40 years ago and people who are freshmen, they’re always getting together, they’re celebrating, they’re cheering together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pitino says the team will head to San Diego on either Tuesday or Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The Johnnies hope to go further than they did during last year\u2019s NCAA Tournament, when they were knocked out after round two.<\/p>\n
NY1 will be following along as St. John\u2019s chases the national title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"St. John’s University’s basketball team is heading to San Diego. They are a No. 5 seed in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161436,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[11101,25,3691,9,24,12,63,122,124,123,319,27,200],"class_list":["post-164812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-app-sports","tag-app-top-stories","tag-emma-barnett","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-sports","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}