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NEW YORK — Take it from someone who knows: St. John’s is “not a great basketball team,” St. John’s coach Rick Pitino said after a 77-64 loss earlier this month to No. 1 Connecticut.
Now 71 years old and on his sixth Division I job, Pitino remains an astute evaluator of talent. The Red Storm are not a great basketball team by any stretch of the imagination; they are, actually, extremely average, if not somewhat worse. And with each passing loss − and the losses continue to add up − Pitino’s frustration reaches a new high.
“We’re not a great shooting team and we’re not a great defensive team,” he said. “I look at it pragmatically. We are small, we are slow laterally, we don’t shoot the ball great and we don’t play great defense because of those shortcomings. These are the weaknesses.
“Outside of that, we’re pretty good.”
RIck Pitino calls out St. John’s after latest loss
Pitino unleashed a caustic teardown of the Red Storm after a loss on Sunday to Seton Hall, calling this season “the most unenjoyable experience of my lifetime.” The team is “so unathletic that we can’t guard anybody without fouling,” he said.
“We have to try to keep getting better. And hopefully we get on a run.”
With the list of possible at-large bids as crowded as the traffic on the Long Island Expressway heading toward campus, the Red Storm’s odds of reaching the tournament are rapidly approaching zero.
Once 12-4 after beating Providence on Jan. 10 and among almost every projected 68-team field, St. John’s has won just twice since, against Villanova and DePaul. Now 14-12, the Red Storm have plummeted to third from the bottom in the Big East, ahead of Georgetown and the Blue Demons. After the loss to the Pirates, the Red Storm are included on just two of the 102 brackets compiled by BracketMatrix.com.
“Our mindset has to change,” said senior point guard Daniss Jenkins. “If you see the games we keep losing, it’s like the same things. So we’re not learning, you know? We’re not getting better.”
First-year struggles normal for Rick Pitino
Sluggish starts are not new for Pitino, who only once in his previous Division I stops has led a team to the tournament in his debut season. That came at Iona, where he made two tournament appearances in the past three years to land back in the Big East. But rebuilding and winning at St. John’s in the current landscape of college sports may be Pitino’s most challenging test since he embraced the rebuild at sanctions-laden Kentucky in 1989.
“It’s our first year,” he said. “Every first year I’ve had, I’ve never had a great team. But I will tell you, I am worried about them. Because of the culture. It’s very tough to build … so many football coaches are getting out, so many basketball coaches are getting out, because of this culture. It’s tough to build a program. You’ve got to innovate and you really have to understand these rules right now. Or the lack of rules.
“For us, we can’t really build a program and a culture because everybody leaves. We did it with six fifth-year guys; they’re all going to leave. We’ve got to replace them with free agents.”
NIL era of college basketball requires different approach
Almost without exception, Division I coaches can no longer construct successful programs by focusing on and developing traditional four-year recruits. Pitino and his staff brought in one-year rentals heading into his first season with the Red Storm as a way to kickstart the roster, a process that will have to be repeated this coming offseason.
He also trashed the program’s recruiting efforts after Sunday’s loss, going as far as to say the Red Storm “kind of lost this season with the way we recruited. We recruited the antithesis of the way I coach.
“We had to put together a team at the last second. We will never, ever, do that again.”
While his tenure at Iona coincided with the beginning of the name, image and likeness era, Pitino has never had to develop a major-conference program in this environment. The nature of recruiting in the NIL era requires flexibility: Like every other Division I program, St. John’s will have to cobble together rosters from the portal and the high school level, and will have to continue to roll the dice on transfers and hope the team comes together during offseason workouts.
“He’s just joining the club,” said ESPN college basketball analyst and former St. John’s coach Fran Fraschilla. “Welcome to the new normal. Everyone in Division I is now a JUCO coach. It’s just the way it is.”
And this attempted rebuild will come in one of the most difficult leagues in the country. The Big East has three teams ranked in the USA TODAY Sports men’s basketball coaches poll and could send as many as six teams into the tournament. The conference went 12-4 in last year’s tournament, with Creighton advancing to the Elite Eight and Connecticut capturing the fifth national championship in program history.
At the home stretch of his debut season, Pitino and the Red Storm are looking up at some of the top programs in the country while watching their season unravel at the seams. More than just one player or one step away from a spot near the top of the conference, St. John’s remains a distance behind the best of what the Big East can offer.
“I think we can get there,” Jenkins said. “We’ve got to be smart enough to know what we have to do. We have to do it. There has to be a standard.”
Pitino’s track record says the Red Storm will eventually break into the tournament and climb the conference standings. But to win at St. John’s will take mastering the system he’s often criticized: Pitino has called the rapid advent of NIL and the transfer portal “a very difficult time for college basketball,” adding, “We need to stop all the hypocrisy of NIL.”
While St. John’s will have to make improvements in NIL offerings − Pitino made a plea for donations during a taped video segment played at Madison Square Garden during the loss to Connecticut − the program could be a popular landing spot for high-end transfers drawn to what the Red Storm can offer: playing time, the chance to compete in the Big East and, maybe more than anything else, the chance to play for Pitino himself.
“Once he gets it, I have no doubt that he’s going to win,” Fraschilla said. “You can put Rick at Alaska-Anchorage and he’ll win in two years. That’s just the way it is.”
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