{"id":59610,"date":"2025-12-03T13:26:25","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T13:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/59610\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T13:26:25","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T13:26:25","slug":"separating-fact-from-fiction-as-st-johns-works-out-early-season-snags","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/59610\/","title":{"rendered":"Separating fact from fiction as St. John’s works out early season snags"},"content":{"rendered":"

St. John\u2019s is in the midst of a nine-day layoff following its disappointing 1-2 trip to Las Vegas for the Players Era Festival. Despite their uneven performance, the Johnnies remain nationally ranked at No. 23. Ahead of Saturday\u2019s contest against Ole Miss at the Garden, The Post\u2019s Zach Braziller plays a game of fact or fiction with the current state of Rick Pitino\u2019s team:\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Point guard is St. John\u2019s biggest issue\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fiction: St. John\u2019s is losing games because of their defense and their inability to keep the opposition off the glass. The Johnnies are 316th in defensive rebounding percentage (36.4). They couldn\u2019t slow down Alabama\u2019s Labaron Philon Jr. or Auburn\u2019s Tahaad Pettiford<\/a> down the stretch in a pair of frustrating losses. They allowed 11 second-chance points in the final 7:53 of the Iowa State setback.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The team struggles to defend athletic guards off the dribble. Combine that with giving the opposition extra chances and it is a recipe for disaster in a close game against a quality opponent. While the focus in the Auburn loss was how poorly St. John\u2019s performed in the final nine minutes, the game turned when Auburn, down nine, reeled off six consecutive points early in the second half on second chances.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This has to get cleaned up. It\u2019s on the guards to rebound more, something Pitino has preached since the Michigan exhibition, but also on the forwards to be better. Pitino said star forward Zuby Ejiofor is as guilty as anyone of not boxing out well enough. While so much has been made of the point guard position, St. John\u2019s is still seventh in adjusted offensive efficiency.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"St. John\u2019s is in the midst of a nine-day layoff following its disappointing 1-2 trip to Las Vegas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3361,9,24,55,54,56,3362,319,431,428,3363],"class_list":{"0":"post-59610","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-college-basketball","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-city-news","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-rick-pitino","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-sports-columnists","17":"tag-sports-plus","18":"tag-st-johns-red-storm"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59610","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=59610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}