After christening Ian Jackson as the Red Storm’s “next great” point guard earlier this offseason, then proclaiming St. John’s would run a pointless system in August, Rick Pitino is now announcing that Stanford transfer Oziyah Sellers is the starting point guard for St. John’s heading into the season.
“Oziyah is the point guard and Dylan [Darling] is the backup point guard,” Rick Pitino told Kevin Connelly of Storm The Paint during halftime of a scrimmage at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday afternoon.
Sellers excels in his role as an off-ball shooting threat, hitting 39.6% from three on 222 attempts in his career, but he has never been considered a table-setter up until now. Across his three collegiate seasons, Sellers only averaged 0.8 assists against 1.1 turnovers per game. He did set a career-high in assists last season at Stanford, but he only ranked fifth in assists per game (1.3) for the Cardinal.
If the news caught Red Storm fans off-guard, it certainly was a shock for Sellers, too, who came to St. John’s believing he would remain in the role he’s played for his entire college career.
“To be completely honest with you, no, I didn’t envision it,” Sellers told the media, according to Adam Zagoria. “I kind of was expecting to come here to play the shooting guard, but I told [Pitino] when I was getting recruited that I’m here to do whatever job he wants me to do. So if that’s playing point guard, I’ll play point guard.”
The Sellers-at-point project was encouraging during Wednesday’s scrimmage. According to Zach Braziller of the New York Post, Sellers posted 30 points, seven assists, and only one turnover.
Sellers’s track record doesn’t favor his chances of being an effective point guard, but if performances like he had on Wednesday are an indication, the senior from Hayward, California could surprise the college basketball world. His and the Red Storm’s first dress rehearsal will come next Saturday, October 18, in a pre-season exhibition versus Towson (2 p.m., ESPN+).
