Rick Pitino looks on as St. John’s opened Hall of Fame coach’s tenure with Red Storm with commanding win over Stony Brook. (Photo by Vincent Dusovic/St. John’s Athletics)
For this part of the ride
Leave behind your sorrows, let this day be the last
For tomorrow, there’ll be sunshine, and all this darkness past
— Bruce Springsteen, “Land of Hope and Dreams”
It’s easy to get caught up in what the future looks like now that St. John’s fans have caught their first significant glimpse of the nascent life birthed on the corner of Union and Utopia. After nearly a quarter-century of incompetence and one broken promise after another, rushing into devotion would be deemed more forgivable than foolish.
Welcome to the Rick Pitino experience.
The sometimes beleaguered, oftentimes embattled, everytime brilliant basketball mind made his official debut at the helm of the Red Storm Tuesday night, and offered a sweeping contrast to what the denizens of the Johnnies’ fan base have clamored for since Lou Carnesecca stepped down in 1992. Pitino put his Hall of Fame coaching acumen to good use Tuesday, leading St. John’s to a 90-74 win over Stony Brook on a night where his players shot 51 percent from the floor and drilled 11 of 22 3-point attempts to prove that the ballyhooed exhibition loss to Division II Pace University nine days prior was merely an aberration.
“We had three things we wanted to accomplish,” Pitino revealed after his career as the 22nd shepherd in program history officially commenced. “We wanted to stop the three, outrebound them, and then not turn the ball over. Unfortunately, we’re coaching on the fly. We’re trying to teach them (and) they don’t have the habits. They’re learning while they’re coming down the court and that’s not a good thing, but in a month’s time, they’ll have the habits.”
“We watched what we didn’t do,” Joel Soriano said, addressing the loss to Pace. “We talked about what teams could exploit from us from watching the two exhibition games that we had, and just worked at it. We just tried to bounce back, man, play our brand of basketball. At the end of the day, if we’re gonna lose games, we’re gonna lose by beating ourselves. I thought we were very prepared.”
Don’t go into shock at that last sentence. Yes, preparation is a novel concept in Queens compared to most of the last decade, but that underscores the advantage the Red Storm now has on its bench. Also new to the equation was the usage of set plays — something I personally have never seen in 16 years of covering the basketball program at the school that has since become my alma mater — and Soriano developing an outside shot. That’s right, the big man who had never even attempted a 3-pointer in his college career before Tuesday took and made a pair from beyond the arc.
Joel Soriano demonstrated Rick Pitino’s vaunted player development skills by taking and making both of his first two career 3-point attempts Tuesday. (Photo by Vincent Dusovic/St. John’s Athletics)
“Every single day, Monday through Friday, he’s taking 400-500 of them,” Pitino said of Soriano, who tallied 16 of his 22 points after halftime and also amassed 11 rebounds. “I was real happy he didn’t hesitate. I told you guys beforehand he was going to be a 3-point shooter. I don’t think you quite believed me, but I told you he was going to be and tonight, he showed it. I was real proud of him. Him and (Chris) Ledlum (16 points, 14 rebounds) were a force inside.”
Soriano and Ledlum were two of three players, Daniss Jenkins (17 points, 8 assists, 7 rebounds) the other, who controlled the game for the Red Storm, with each taking turns as the dominant hand. While Soriano took charge after the intermission and Ledlum was the star of the opening stanza by nearly recording his double-double before halftime, it was Jenkins who set the tone in the opening minutes by stuffing the stat sheet and serving as the conduit between Pitino and what the coach demanded of him and his teammates.
“I think they’re learning each other,” Pitino conceded. “They’re learning me, I’m learning them. I’m very easy to play for now. It’s not that Greece made me mellow, but I want to be more passionate than I’ve ever been and at my age, I want to have more fun than I’ve ever had. And I’m having a blast with these guys.”
With one game now in the books, a looser and formidable St. John’s team now sets its sights on Madison Square Garden for the first time, as the Johnnies welcome Michigan to midtown Manhattan. Pitino once accepted an offer to coach Michigan before his well-documented change of heart that later led him to Louisville, but his focus now rests solely on his status as the caretaker of a program Carnesecca lifted into the college basketball pantheon. In fact, the specter of his former adversary weighed on his mind before leading St. John’s into battle for the first time.
“When I was walking out, two things came to my mind immediately,” Pitino recalled. “One was Lou, I was thinking of Lou (and) I don’t know why, but I was just thinking of Lou because he’s the reason this place is special and it’s such an honor to take over for him. The second thing I thought of right away was Michigan. We know how every game is so important. We think we’re gonna be a pretty good team in January, but we’ve gotta get to that point without taking too many lumps.”
Dreams will not be thwarted, faith will be rewarded.
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