There is no sugar-coating it: St. John’s got their behinds kicked against UConn.
The readers of this site are already well-aware of the grotesque details of Wednesday night’s 72-40 clubbing, and the inescapable tomato–flinging from the normally college basketball-agnostic sports media world for their efforts affirmed that, but what’s done is done and memories from this rout will linger until the ball tips off again versus Villanova.
Shooting 19.7% from the field and missing 24 consecutive shots to
end the game implies that Wednesday night’s shooting performance was such a fluke that there is no use taking away anything from the beating other than that they need to make more shots, and the best course of action is to forget it ever happened.
However, St. John’s didn’t reap the success of these last few seasons by simply burning the game film from gutting losses and not taking the correct lessons from their setbacks.
Back in 2024, when St. John’s blew a 19-point first-half lead to Seton Hall to lose their eighth contest in ten games, Rick Pitino declared the team was slow laterally and that season was the most miserable experience of his coaching career. While those soundbites drew the ire and mocking of the college basketball world, that moment galvanized the Johnnies.
The 2023-24 Red Storm won their next six games and even got their revenge on the Pirates in the Big East Tournament. Even though they eventually missed the Big Dance, St. John’s finished their season on a high note, playing their best basketball to close the campaign by averaging 89 points per game in the seven games following Pitino’s infamous post-game press conference.
Next season, it took three close calls with Baylor, Georgia, and Creighton for St. John’s to become one of the most clutch teams in college basketball, ultimately winning 31 games in which they came back from double-digit deficits on several occasions, and securing their first Big East double title in almost 40 years.
Then, look no further than what happened in the wake of a humbling defeat to Providence on January 3, in which St. John’s had their gaudiest offensive performance of this season up until Wednesday’s game. Rick Pitino adjusted the lineup to form a front-court of Dillon Mitchell, Bryce Hopkins, and Zuby Ejiofor, and they rattled out 13 consecutive wins after starting the season at a 9-5 record.
Pitino most likely won’t make any changes as drastic as that lineup swap this late into the season. That means the players themselves hold the keys to how they move forward from their nauseating 32-point pummeling in Hartford, whether that is spending more time in the gym working on jumpers, playing with more conviction when making decisions with the ball so the defense can’t set up or cover in time, or attempting more high-percentage looks at the rim or beyond the arc.
This is still a top-25 team in the country that is led by a Hall of Fame head coach with scoring talent littered all over the roster, and they can show that Wednesday’s result does not define this team, just like all of those aforementioned results before this season did not come to define those Red Storm teams.
