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Even as the wins have piled up and sixth-ranked St. John’s has carved out the school’s best regular season in 25 years, Rick Pitino has maintained that his team can beat anybody, but also lose to anyone.
A Big East regular-season title hasn’t changed his mind.
The Johnnies can go far in March, but they can also get picked off early, the Hall of Fame coach believes.
“We are a type of basketball team, we can definitely lose in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, and we can definitely go to a Final Four,” Pitino said during an appearance on WFAN on Monday. “We beat Providence by two both times, and Providence is not lighting the league on fire. That’s who we are: We are a gritty, hard-working team, and that’s what it should be in Year 2. Year 2 should be, you turned it around. The start was the first year, you turned it around the second year, you made the tournament.
“We know who we are. If we don’t just work every single possession, we can get beat, because it’s proven out to be that way the whole season.”
St. John’s (26-4, 17-2) hasn’t lost at full strength since New Year’s Eve, and has won 15 of its last 16 games.
The Johnnies clinched an outright Big East crown on Saturday, the program’s first since 1985, and will be the No. 1 seed in the Big East Tournament.
They will have had a full week off before visiting No. 20 Marquette, and then five more days off before the conference tournament opener.
With several players dealing with injuries, from Kadary Richmond (both groins) to Aaron Scott (hamstring) the break comes at a good time.
“One of the things that people don’t realize, we’ve had major injuries and have not faltered,” the St. John’s coach said. “Deivon [Smith] missed quite a few games, Kadary’s missed quite a few practices, Aaron’s missed time, RJ [Luis Jr.] has missed time, and they still won. To me, that speaks volumes about what the players are about.”
Throughout this season, Pitino has offered high praise for last year’s team.
That continued during his interview on Monday.
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His first team at St. John’s struggled most of the season, but hit its stride late, winning six straight games before a Big East Tournament semifinal loss to eventual national champion Connecticut.
He isn’t sure which team is better at this point in the year.
“If you took last year’s team at this time of year versus this team, I don’t know who would win. I really don’t,” Pitino said. “Now 80 percent of the season, this team has been much better. But at the end of last season, where we lost 95-90 in the Big East Tournament to Connecticut, who went on a rampage and killed everyone it played, we were really, really good the last [six] games of the last season.
“It would’ve been a helluva game, because offensively Daniss Jenkins and Jordan Dingle were playing great, [Chris] Ledlum was picking it up, Joel [Soriano] was Joel. We were pretty damn good at the end of the year, it’s just that we were not good at all at the beginning of the year.”
