Team: St. John’s Red Storm
2024-25 Record: 31-5, 18-2 Big East
2024-25 Big East Finish: First, three games in front of Creighton.
Final Computer Rankings
NET: #13
KenPom.com: #14
BartTorvik.com: #16
Postseason? The Red Storm rolled through the Big East tournament almost without difficulty, beating Butler by 23, downing Marquette by 16, and toppling Creighton in the title game by 16. They were trailing both the semifinal and the final at the half, but y’know, double digit win at the end, so like I said,
almost without difficulty. That put the Johnnies into the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2019, as a single digit seed for the first time since 2015, and as a favored seed for the first time since 2011. They wiped out Nebraska Omaha by 30 in the first round before getting tripped up by #10 seed Arkansas in the second round, 75-66.
Key Departures: St. John’s spent most of last season effectively only playing six guys, and five of them are gone now. Three of the five were on their final year of eligibility, so their departures were planned and known to the Johnnies. Kadary Richmond is probably the most notable name of the three, as he was one of three double digit scorers on last year’s roster and he led the team in assists at 5.3 per game. His scoring and rebounding was down a little bit from the previous season at Seton Hall, and maybe he didn’t quite pop out the way that a lot of people projected that he would, but I presume that double Big East championship and NCAA tournament appearance makes up for it.
The other two guys who were leaving anyway were Deivon Smith and Aaron Scott. Like Richmond, Smith was on his COVID bonus season of eligibility, and as a part-time starter, he averaged 9.3 points, 4.9 rebounds, and 3.9 assists per game while knocking down 35% of his three-pointers. Quality stuff, especially since he was in and out of the lineup. Scott started 30 times in 36 appearances after three years at North Texas, and while I presume St. John’s would have liked him to shoot better than 29% on nearly five three-point attempts per game, he chipped in 8.4 points and 4.3 rebounds a night.
The last two notable departures are both on a spectrum of “huh, that’s surprising.” It’s not weird that the Big East Player of the Year chose to enter and stay in the NBA Draft with a year of eligibility remaining. You can think whatever you want to think about RJ Luis’ game after he averaged 18.2 points, 7.2 rebounds, and 2.0 assists per game, but when the NBA front offices show up to the Combine and watch you shoot 11-for-29 and end up as a -41 in the two scrimmages you participate in, that’s not gonna get you drafted, and yet he stayed in anyway. Still, since Luis had entered the transfer portal along with entering his name for the draft pool, it seems he was never going to be in Queens in 2025-26 anyway. Wonder if that’s because he got sent to the bench with five minutes left in the Arkansas game while St. John’s was down two and he never returned to the game? Of course, he was 3-for-17 in the game at the time, so you can see why the coaching staff made that call.
The other guy heading out the door is Simeon Wilcher, who transferred to Texas with two years of eligibility remaining. After being right on the edge of being considered a real rotation player as a freshman, Wilcher started 25 times in 36 games for the Johnnies this past season, and averaged 8.0 points, 1.9 rebounds, and 1.4 assists. He shot under 30% on threes for the year on 3.1 attempts per game, and ultimately finished the year with a KenPom.com offensive rating under the median number of 100.0. All in all, it’s probably a disappointing two years with the Johnnies after being a top 40 prospect according to 247 Sports and the best STJ recruit this century, but that’s how it goes sometimes.
Key Returners: There’s only three guys back from last year’s roster at all, and only one of them had a rotation role. That one guy has a chance to be Big East Preseason Player of the Year, and yep: It’s Zuby Ejiofor.
There’s a pretty easy argument to be made that Ejiofor was the most impactful player on the St. John’s roster last season even if RJ Luis was Player of the Year and Kadary Richmond was the point guard with the preseason hype. He was one of the best offensive rebounders in the country last year, and since STJ was one of the 30 worst three-point shooting teams and a sub-250 team in effective field goal percentage, you can see the value of a guy getting you more than four extra chances per game. It feels like he plays bigger than his listed 6’9” height or his listed 240 pound weight, as he’s always getting something done in the paint, and without much of a three-point shot to speak of, Ejifor averaged nearly 15 points a game to go with his team high 8.1 rebounds and team high 1.4 blocks.
Key Additions: There are four freshmen on this roster, one from the United States and three from Europe. It’ll make sense in a minute (or if you watched Simeon Wilcher’s first year in New York) but I will believe that any of the four freshmen are rotation contributors on this roster when I see them doing it in January. That includes Kelvin Odih (6’4”, 190 lb guard, Providence, Rhode Island), who comes in as the #67 prospect in the Class of 2025 according to the 247 Sports Composite rankings.
There are also seven transfers here, six of whom have been real contributors at the Division 1 level in one way or another in the past. The one who has not is Handje Tamba (6’11”, 230 lb center, Kinshasa, Congo), who spent two years doing nothing across 560 minutes of action at Weber State and then came kinda close to averaging a double-double for an NAIA team in Tennessee. Do I think he’s going to contribute anything at all this season? No, I do not, because the Big East is a better league than Weber State’s Big Sky Conference and he couldn’t play in that league as of March 2024. But he is the tallest guy on the team and someone has to give Zuby Ejiofor a break here and there, so who knows.
Speaking of the Big Sky, St. John’s has gone to the other end of the spectrum on transfers from that league in the form of Dylan Darling (6’1”, 180 lb guard, Spokane, Washington), who was the 2025 Big Sky Player of the Year. He was one of just three players in the country to rank in the top 30 in points (19.8/game) and assists (5.7) last season, and he hit over 35% of his three-pointers for Idaho State, too. He is the only guy on this roster that even resembles a Big East caliber point guard based on previous experience right now, so we’ll see what that means for how the Johnnies go about their business.
The most familiar name to you, the discerning Marquette fan, is Bryce Hopkins (6’7”, 22o lb forward/guard, Oak Park, Illinois). Yep, he’s over here now, not in Providence. He played 91 total minutes last season after suffering a season ending knee injury in his 14th game of the 2023-24 season before shutting things back down again. If he’s healthy and 100% back to the way he was in 2022-23, then he’s a candidate for Big East Player of the Year. In his 47 healthy games with Providence, Hopkins averaged 15.7 points, 8.5 rebounds, and 2.0 assists per game. The Johnnies would like him to shoot more like sophomore year (36% on threes) than junior year (18.9%). I would like him to shoot worse, but I presume I will not get my way.
247 Sports says the biggest transfer signing in this recruiting class is Ian Jackson (6’5”, 190 lb guard, Bronx, New York), who was a top 10 prospect coming out of high school a year ago. He didn’t quite show up like that with North Carolina, averaging 11.9 points and 2.7 rebounds, but also his minutes started to dry up as the season moved into February and March. This is a move closer to home for him, so we’ll see if that helps boost him up a little bit.
I have to figure that Dillon Mitchell (6’8”, 210 lb forward, Tampa, Florida) and Oziyah Sellers (6’5”, 185 lb guard, Hayward, California) are coming to Queens with intentions of playing a rotation role at the very least, as this will be the final year of college hoops for both of them. Mitchell spent two years at Texas before ending up at Cincinnati last season. 9.9 points and 6.9 rebounds per game is pretty good, but from the looks of things, he’s not a threat to shoot it from outside. Not as in “he doesn’t do it well,” which he doesn’t, but as in “he has 42 total attempts in over 100 career games.” Sellers started off with two years at USC before spending last year playing in the ACC at Stanford and I just like saying that part out loud regularly because it’s insane. His time with the Trojans was nothing particularly interesting, but he broke out to the tune of 13.7 points and 2.3 rebounds per game with the Cardinal last year. He’s a career 39.6% three-point shooter, and he’s just a touch over 40% in the last two seasons combined.
Finally, there’s Joson Sanon (6’5”, 195 lb guard, Fall River, Massachusetts), who arrives at St. John’s following a freshman campaign at Arizona State. Seems like it went pretty well for him from a contribution viewpoint: 11.9 points, 3.4 rebounds, and an assist per game, just short of 37% on 4.5 three-pointers per outing. He was in the Sun Devils’ starting lineup early and late in the season and also missed some time in the middle of the season while dealing with an ankle sprain. It didn’t go so well for him from a “is this team any good” viewpoint, as ASU was 13-20 and 4-16 in Big 12 play.
Coach: Rick Pitino, entering his third season at St. John’s and 38th season as a Division 1 head coach. He has record of 51-18 with St. John’s and an overall record of 762-308 after stops at (in reverse order) Iona, Louisville, Kentucky, Providence, Boston University, and, after a six game stint as interim head coach to end a season, Hawaii. He also went 192-220 in two seasons with the New York Knicks and four with the Boston Celtics, and he posted a record of 18-19 in two seasons with Panathinaikos in Greece.
Outlook: Ah, yes, the age old question of “how do you follow up tying the school record for wins in a season, a record that has stood since 1986?” There are just seven seasons in St. John’s history with a better winning percentage, six of which ended before World War II ended, and the seventh is one of the two other seasons with 31 wins. St. John’s suffered their fourth loss of the season in 1985 in the Final Four, which is kinda neat, other than the part where they lost to Georgetown by 18.
The answer to that question is kind of hard to grapple with at the moment, if only because no one that we expect to play rotation minutes on this team in 2025-26 has ever played rotation minutes with anyone else in said rotation before. I’ve been a big fan of saying “you can let Rick Pitino coach his team against your team, or you can let him coach your team against his team, and he’s still gonna do just fine.” I did not ask or require Pitino to try to do this literally by returning just Zuby Ejiofor from last year’s Big East championship team, but that’s what he’s doing.
With all of that said, we can’t ignore the fact that even with nearly zero continuity on the roster, BartTorvik.com’s projections for next season have St. John’s at #8 in the country. That’s best in the Big East, two spots in front of UConn and 15 in front of Creighton, the only other two squads in the top 50. Things seem to be put together so well for St. John’s that even if Bryce Hopkins isn’t all the way back from his knee injury — we haven’t seen him play four full consecutive games of college basketball since December 2023, don’t tell me you aren’t curious if he’s for real after all this time — and we drop him out of Torvik’s RosterCast, the Johnnies drop alllllllllll the way down to #13.
So they’re probably going to be good. Maybe there’s going to be a bit of shakiness early on in the season as Pitino hammers out the rough edges of his rotation, but even last year, the Johnnies lost to Baylor and Georgia before embarking on a 25-2 run heading into the NCAA tournament. I am curious to see if Pitino is going to bend this roster to what he wants to do or if he’s going to lean into the strengths of the team. The last eight Pitino coached teams were somewhere south of #160 in the country in terms of three-point attempt rate, or what percentage of their shots came from behind the arc. That’s both of his STJ teams, all three of his Iona teams, and his last three Louisville teams in 2015, 2016, and 2017. Coming back to college basketball in 2021 didn’t alter Pitino’s view on how much his teams should shoot it from long range, not even when his last Iona team ranked #70 in the country in shooting percentage. Four of his six incoming Division 1 transfers have a proven track record as good shooters, and Bryce Hopkins has a history of being able to do it even if he had a bad 14 games the last time we saw him regularly. It looks like Pitino is trying to lean into getting shooting production, but his history says he doesn’t do that.
There’s also the question of whether or not Rick Pitino is just blowing smoke about a perceived weakness on this roster.
“The point guard is totally done in basketball,” Pitino, who turns 73 next month, said Tuesday after an open scrimmage at Carnesecca Arena that was attended by a slew of media, boosters and other onlookers.
With point guard Kadary Richmond having moved on from St. John’s to the NBA, North Carolina transfer Ian Jackson will spend some time as a lead guard for the Red Storm, as will Idaho State transfer Dylan Darling.
…
“We just realized that we have so many good athletes that we’re going to run a pointless system,” Pitino said, adding that Cincinnati transfer Dillon Mitchell led the team in assists during the summer and Providence transfer Bryce Hopkins finished second.
“So everybody handles the ball, everybody passes the ball. Ian obviously will play a one or a two when he’s in the game, but they’re all interchangeable parts. So we’re running pure motion not because of a lack of anything. We’re running pure motion because everybody’s really physically skilled.”
…
“You know, I said this to the team, who’s the point guard of the Knicks, the Lakers, the Celtics, the world champions [Oklahoma City Thunder]?” Pitino asked rhetorically. “The point guard is totally done in basketball. The days of John Stockton are long gone. There are no more point guards. Chris Paul is probably the last one. So you got to play with everybody handling the basketball, five out and just create good movement.”
As big of a role as Kadary Richmond had for the Johnnies last year, the fact of the matter is that Rick Pitino basketball has, historically, not relied on passing to the open man all that much. Since 1997, which is as far back as KenPom.com stretches, Pitino coached teams have ranked in the top 100 in assist rate just 12 times in 22 seasons and just twice in the last 11 campaigns that he guided. They’ve ranked in the top 50 just five times in those 22 seasons.
If he’s right and they can win just playing basketball and not worrying about any one guy being the guy who has to create for everyone, then great. But if they really do need a guy who is stirring the drink and Rick’s just trying to throw up a smokescreen for something that he doesn’t think they can do well…. well, the Red Storm might be in a little bit of trouble, unless Dylan Darling’s Big Sky abilities translate to the Big East.
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