Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic <\/p>\n
The day was March 21, 2023.<\/p>\n
St. John\u2019s was coming off another disappointing season, another year in which the Red Storm fell well short of expectations.<\/p>\n
It was Rick Pitino\u2019s first day as the Johnnies\u2019 new head coach, and he didn\u2019t bother asking this win-starved fan base for patience. <\/p>\n
He made promises inside Madison Square Garden\u2019s Chase Square that afternoon that St. John\u2019s would soon be a player in college basketball again.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not going to be difficult,\u201d the Hall of Fame coach said then. \u201cThere is no difference between St. John\u2019s to Connecticut, St. John\u2019s to Marquette, St. John\u2019s to Xavier. St. John\u2019s is one of the legendary names in college basketball. Has it fallen on tough times? Yes, it has, but now we\u2019re ready to fall on great times.<\/p>\n
\u201cRaise this roof up, because St. John\u2019s is going to be back, I guarantee that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Less than two years later, the Johnnies do indeed feel back. <\/p>\n
On Monday, they rose to No. 12 in the Associated Press Top 25 rankings, their highest spot since finishing the 1999-2000 season at No. 9. <\/p>\n
They sit all alone atop the Big East, winners of eight straight games and 14 of their past 15. <\/p>\n
And this week \u2014 arguably the biggest week this program has seen in 25 years \u2014 they can cement their status as a threat in March.<\/p>\n
First, No. 11 Marquette visits the Garden on Tuesday, the Johnnies\u2019 first regular-season home game as a top 15 team against another one since Jan. 30, 1999. <\/p>\n
Three days later, St. John\u2019s (19-3, 10-1) travels to Storrs, Conn., to take on No. 19 Connecticut, the back-to-back national champions.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year was the first time I played against a ranked team in my college career. So now going into tomorrow as a ranked team, it\u2019s pretty surreal, pretty exciting,\u201d junior wing RJ Luis said Monday. \u201cIt\u2019s a really cool experience, especially to do it at the Garden and I can\u2019t wait.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a big, big week for St. John\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the next four days, the Red Storm can answer their critics by knocking off two teams most experts expected to challenge one another for the regular-season crown. <\/p>\n
Of the top four teams in the Big East, St. John\u2019s has faced only Creighton once, and lost that game by a single point. <\/p>\n
Its other defeats, in the Bahamas to Baylor and Georgia, came by a combined four points. <\/p>\n
The lone item St. John\u2019s r\u00e9sum\u00e9 lacks is a high-end win. That can change this week.<\/p>\n
It obviously won\u2019t be easy. <\/p>\n
Marquette is one of 12 teams ranked in the top 30 in both offensive and defensive efficiency. <\/p>\n
Senior guard Kam Jones is the front-runner for Big East Player of the Year. <\/p>\n
The Golden Eagles are tenacious on the perimeter, the nation\u2019s leaders in turnover margin at plus-7.5. <\/p>\n
Marquette forced Connecticut into 25 turnovers in a loss on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t drive into closed areas,\u201d Pitino said. \u201cThat\u2019s something RJ has to be careful of, Kadary [Richmond] has to be careful of, [Simeon Wilcher] has to be careful of. You can\u2019t drive into a small area where you\u2019re congested. We have to be very careful with that.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is a narrative that St. John\u2019s hasn\u2019t beaten anyone of significance, that these two games will be revealing. <\/p>\n
Pitino chafed at that notion. <\/p>\n
The three defeats could have gone either way. <\/p>\n
The Baylor loss at the buzzer was the result of a clock error. <\/p>\n
Of the Johnnies\u2019 19 wins, 14 have come by double figures. St. John\u2019s swept Xavier, which beat Marquette and Connecticut.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s a game that\u2019s been played that we haven\u2019t been for real,\u201d Pitino said. \u201cNobody\u2019s blown us out. We\u2019ve fought everybody tooth and nail. You see how hard they play. We\u2019ve been on television every single night. So I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any mystery with us. I think [our detractors] know our frailties, they know our strengths.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pitino\u2019s first season didn\u2019t quite go according to plan, St. John\u2019s falling painfully short of the NCAA Tournament after a strong finish. <\/p>\n
This year has been more along the lines of expectations, the Johnnies taking a big step in his second campaign like most of Pitino\u2019s teams historically have. <\/p>\n
They can take another major step forward over the next four days.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all came in with one mindset, and that is to obviously play hard and to win games, win big and go dancing in March,\u201d Luis said. \u201cWe\u2019re just a very gritty, hard-working team. The whole season so far we\u2019ve been showing a lot of fight.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic The day was March 21, 2023. St. John\u2019s was coming off another disappointing season, another year in which the Red Storm fell well short of expectations. It was Rick Pitino\u2019s first day as the Johnnies\u2019 new head coach, and he didn\u2019t bother asking this<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":192789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-192788","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192788"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192790,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192788\/revisions\/192790"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}