St. John\u2019s ascended to heights it hadn\u2019t reached in decades last season, winning the Big East regular-season title outright for the first time in 40 years and the Big East Tournament championship for the first time in 25 years. The Red Storm got a No. 2 NCAA Tournament seeding and their first tourney win since 2000. <\/p>\n
St. John\u2019s did all that despite big flaws \u2014 it ranked 347th of 363 in three-point shooting percentage and 285th in free-throw percentage \u2014 but overcame these shortcomings by becoming one of the nation\u2019s best offensive rebounding teams and the No. 2-ranked squad on the defensive end. <\/p>\n
The 2025-26 Red Storm could be a far better team after coach Rick Pitino brought in the nation\u2019s best crop of transfers (according to 247Sports), packing the roster with elite scorers and great outside shooters. <\/p>\n
The Red Storm held an intrasquad scrimmage at the Garden on Wednesday, and one could see they are incredibly athletic, play fast and have an array of shot-makers to deploy. The starting five as currently constructed \u2014 Zuby Ejiofor, Joson Sanon, Bryce Hopkins, Ian Jackson and Oziyah Sellers \u2014 looked especially lethal. <\/p>\n
Every program goes into the season with many questions, though. For St. John\u2019s, the biggest is how well it will defend. <\/p>\n
Pitino\u2019s teams have always had defense as a primary directive. Some featured a suffocating press, some had quick-handed pass deflectors and still others were helped by great rim protectors. The very best ones had them all. <\/p>\n
The first indicators could come at the Garden in two weeks when the Red Storm have a big-time exhibition against Michigan. The state of the defense will be more definitive in four weeks when they face Alabama at MSG in the\u00a0season\u2019s second regular-season game. <\/p>\n
Pitino has been integrating a bunch of players who haven\u2019t played together, much like last season. St. John\u2019s didn\u2019t start to become the superlative defensive team that would go 31-5 until its communication started to click sometime in December. A schedule with five games against high majors among the first eight will require a faster timeline. <\/p>\n
To that end, this team was having high-level workouts in the summer, so it\u2019s possible the defense will be there. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re not the defensive team of last year \u2014 yet,\u201d Pitino said. \u201cBut I think they\u2019re all highly intelligent, a very mature team. Whatever you ask them to do, they\u2019ll give you 100%. They\u2019ll be a good defensive team.\u201d <\/p>\n
He added, \u201cNow you know [with]\u00a0the schedule we\u2019re playing, you may not see the numbers that we had last year defensively because . . . the competition\u2019s pretty amazing.\u201d <\/p>\n
Asked how close the Red Storm\u00a0are to becoming the defensive team Pitino demands, Ejiofor replied, \u201cI\u2019ll say we\u2019re close\u00a0. . . Everybody\u2019s committed. Every [member]\u00a0of the coaching staff is harping on defense, especially Coach P. It\u2019s a process, and I think we\u2019re going to get there sooner rather than later.\u201d <\/p>\n
Pitino is working with different ingredients this time around. The solid defenders of a year ago sought to become a great offensive team (though mostly unsuccessfully). This bunch is offensively skilled and learning to play defense. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s much easier to teach defense than teach offense, shooting the ball and things like that,\u201d Pitino said. <\/p>\n
Pitino\u2019s defensive message clearly has landed with the players. \u201c[They] were a top two or three defensive team last year, so that\u2019s what they expect again,\u201d Sellers said. \u201cEvery day . . . we\u2019re just getting a lot better at that end. We\u2019ve all bought into it, so we\u2019ll be all right.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Red Storm have to be more than all right, though. For their offensive skills to pay off with the type of season they\u2019re hoping for, they need to be elite.<\/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 ascended to heights it hadn\u2019t reached in decades last season, winning the Big East regular-season title…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,4044,398,400,401,99,10151],"class_list":["post-215828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-basketball","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\/215828","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=215828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}