St. John\u2019s about to embark on the most anticipated season since Chris Mullin and Walter Berry ran the court together and there is nothing short of optimism for greatness coming from inside the program.<\/p>\n
The Red Storm is coming off a record-tying 31-win season where it won the Big East regular season and tournament titles and reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament. And coach Rick Pitino has brought in a group of transfers considered the best in the nation, according to 247sports.com. When the AP preseason national rankings come out, they could be placed even higher than that 1985 Final Four team that debuted at No. 7.<\/p>\n
The team has been practicing for roughly a month and returning star Zuby Ejiofor loves what he\u2019s seen.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just a bunch of guys that [are]\u00a0ready to compete, coming here and understanding their roles,\u201d Ejiofor said Wednesday at the adidas Brand Center Store in Manhattan where the team mingled with fans at the unveiling of its new line of gear. \u201cWe\u2019ve had a pretty successful summer. Everybody is getting to learn each other . . . We brought in [players]\u00a0that are going to help us overcome the [hurdles]\u00a0that we didn\u2019t last year. And everybody can shoot the heck out of the ball.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked about the hype that surrounds St. John\u2019s, Ejiofor replied, \u201cIt\u2019s good hype . . . I’m pretty sure the whole nation knows St John’s from what we did last year [but]\u00a0we\u2019re not really thinking about our number. You still have to put in the work toward getting the number you deserve. We\u2019re on a good track.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody is pushing each other in practice \u2014 we\u2019ve raised the bar to a high level,\u201d Providence transfer Bryce Hopkins said. \u201cWe’re holding each other to the high expectations and it’s been great so far.\u201d<\/p>\n
A poor-shooting team last season, the Storm overcame with tenacious defense and rebounding. Shooting shouldn\u2019t be a problem this season with St. John\u2019s adding accomplished outside shooters like Arizona State transfer Joson Sanon, Stanford transfer Oziyah Sellers, North Carolina transfer Ian Jackson and Hopkins, among others.<\/p>\n
Ejiofor, too, could be part of the improved shooting. Hopkins said the all-Big East first teamer \u201cis a different player now than he was last year. He\u2019s been working on his jump shot a lot so he can stretch the floor.\u201d<\/p>\n
For all the attention the improved offense gets, Pitino continues to want defense and effort to be the team\u2019s foundation. As Hopkins explained, \u201c[Pitino]\u00a0isn’t going to allow us to be anything under a great defensive team.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey played hard the whole game . . . [and]\u00a0wore their opponents down by how fast they played and their defensive pressure,\u201d Hopkins said. \u201cCoach has been instilling the same things this year and we’re going to look to do a little bit better than they did last season.\u201d<\/p>\n
To hear Jackson tell it, this collection of players might be capable. Asked what struck him most about the team, he replied, \u201cThe level of intensity that we compete with and how detailed everybody is. This group never has to be [told]\u00a0to go hard or push it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s a lot of guys on this team that really haven’t gotten a taste for a championship yet,\u201d Ejiofor said. \u201cIt took a lot of grinding, a lot of effort from every one of us to accomplish what we did last year. . . . and we’re trying to go a lot farther than we did in the tournament last year.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n\tRoger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"St. John\u2019s about to embark on the most anticipated season since Chris Mullin and Walter Berry ran the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,1976,4044,398,400,401,99,10151],"class_list":["post-15199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-college","tag-college-basketball","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaabasketball","tag-sports","tag-st-johns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}