Men's College Hoops Spotlight: St. John's Getting Hot at Just the Right Time

A little more than a month ago, on Jan. 3, the post-game scene at Madison Square Garden was somber when St. John’s head coach Rick Pitino sat for a news conference, his trademark suit swapped for sweats. He placed his left hand on the hip of center Zuby Ejiofor, who had plopped down sullenly beside him on the dais, and compassionately dismissed the Red Storm’s star player. "You can go," Pitino said. "You don’t have to sit here." Pitino would face the impending inquisition alone. In that moment, following a surprising 77-71 defeat at the hands of Providence, a team now tied for 10th in the Big East standings, Pitino’s group was floundering. The result sunk St. John’s to 9-5 overall — equaling the team’s loss total from all of last season — following a lackluster showing in the non-conference portion of its schedule. Suddenly, a team that began the year ranked No. 5 in the AP Top 25 poll and had been picked to win the Big East was in a spot where "our backs are to the wall very early in the season," as Pitino said that afternoon. Pitino’s description felt legitimate, even when factoring in his penchant for recency bias across a coaching career that spans more than 50 years. His team ranked 130th nationally in effective field goal percentage, 173rd in turnover rate, 112th in 3-point field goal percentage and 310th in defensive rebound rate, according to Torvic. A transfer portal class deemed the best in the country by 247Sports wasn’t meshing the way people envisioned, forcing Pitino, desperate to offset the team's lack of a true point guard, to tinker with his starting lineup. Pitino understood that the Red Storm’s margin for error would be exceedingly slim amid a campaign when so many Big East teams were underperforming, further reducing the opportunities for résumé-boosting wins. Since then, St. John’s has reeled off 10 consecutive victories to vault back into the national championship discussion, checking in at No. 17 in the latest AP poll. It’s a run headlined by last week’s upset of then-No. 3 UConn that simultaneously snapped the Huskies’ 18-game winning streak and breathed new life into the Big East race. The potential that seemingly everyone saw in this group before the season began — rugged frontcourt play, hellacious defense, great size and length — is finally beginning to materialize with only a few weeks remaining until the NCAA tournament. [WOMEN'S COLLEGE HOOPS: UCLA Closing in on Big Ten Title Race] "Like I’ve said so many times," Pitino remarked in his post-game news conference after defeating UConn on Friday, "this is the best group of people character-wise that I’ve coached in my 52 years. There’s not one problem, not one guy that gets out of line, not one guy that doesn’t give me everything. They root for each other whether they play 10 seconds or 10 minutes — it doesn’t matter — so it’s a unique group. "And that’s why they kept getting better and better." One of the catalysts for the Red Storm’s turnaround has been Pitino’s decision to insert power forward Dillon Mitchell (6-foot-8, 210 pounds) into the starting lineup, a move that took place immediately after the aforementioned loss to Providence. Mitchell was a five-star prospect and the No. 5 overall recruit in the country when he signed with Texas ahead of the 2022 campaign, ultimately spending two seasons with the Longhorns before migrating to Cincinnati. One year with the Bearcats gave way to another voyage into the transfer portal — this time as the No. 58 overall player after chipping in 9.9 points and 6.9 rebounds per game last season — that ended with a spot in Pitino’s massive transfer class featuring seven newcomers. Playing as the springy, hyper-athletic sidekick to Ejiofor — the Preseason Player of the Year in the league who was recently added to FOX Sports' Gus Johnson's GOT IT team — Mitchell has increased his averages to 10.8 points, 8.7 rebounds and 3.3 assists per game since entering the starting lineup, thrice earning KenPom MVP honors during that stretch. He ranks ninth in the Big East in offensive rebounding percentage (10.1% of shots), sixth in defensive rebounding percentage (22.7% of shots) and 23rd in assist rate (16.1% of field goals). He’s also the Red Storm’s most influential player at the opposite end of the floor, according to EvanMiya.com, with a Defensive Bayesian Performance Rating of 3.35 that is fourth in the league behind Tarris Reed Jr. (4.59) and Silas Demary Jr. (3.91) of UConn and Oswin Erhunmwunse (3.43) of Providence. "Dillon Mitchell played 35 minutes [against UConn]," Pitino said, "and I was all over him the entire night in a positive way because he needed to stay on the floor, and he was getting tired. I said, ‘There’s no fatigue in this game. Come on, man. Dig in. Dig in. Dig in.’ And he did." [MEN'S NCAA RANKINGS: Purdue, Kansas, UNC Moving Up in Top 25] Mitchell’s emergence has coincided with the ongoing stabilization of small forward Bryce Hopkins, a Providence transfer and former first-team All-Big East performer in 2023 who missed most of last season with a torn ACL. Though listed at 6-foot-7 and 225 pounds, Hopkins tends to operate from the outside in — slashing to the basket on penetrating drives and crashing the paint in pursuit of offensive rebounds, hellish traits for typically undersized opponents to defend. He's needed more time than expected to regain full form following knee surgery but is now averaging 13.8 points and 5.6 rebounds per game during the winning streak, which gives the Red Storm another muscular frontcourt option alongside Mitchell and Ejiofor, who leads the team in scoring (16.3), rebounding (7.5), assists (3.5) and blocks (2). "They’re one of the best frontcourts in the country," UConn power forward Alex Karaban said following last week’s loss to St. John’s in which Hopkins, Mitchell and Ejiofor combined for 50 points, 22 rebounds and 17 fouls drawn. "Just those three guys play at such a high level. All three of them are super talented, and they all bring something unique to the table." Added Huskies’ head coach Dan Hurley: "They’re grown-ass men." [MEN'S NCAA TOURNAMENT: Big Ten, SEC Lead Bracket Predictions] Together, they’ve imbued this St. John’s team — constructed with almost entirely new parts — with a legitimate, replicable offensive identity. That has lessened the burden on a guard-heavy group that is still trying to coalesce and, at times, still struggles to shoot from beyond the arc. Ever since that turning-point loss to Providence in early January, when Pitino said his group's back was already against the proverbial wall, the Red Storm rank 17th nationally in offensive efficiency at 124.6 points per 100 possessions, a rate that would make this season the program's most prolific on that end of the floor across 30 years of KenPom data. A wonderful complement to Pitino's trademark defense, which is 19th-best in the country right now. So while it might have taken longer than most people expected for this particular version of St. John's to click — including, perhaps, Pitino himself — the pieces seem like they're finally falling into place. "It’s really difficult every year putting new groups together," Pitino said. "And fortunately, this has been a little easier because they’re such great guys."