Johnnies offer first glimpse of potential contender in summer practice

St. John’s opened practice Tuesday to media, who got to see potential Top 5 Red Storm outfit for first time this summer. (Photo by Jaden Daly/Daly Dose Of Hoops)

NEW YORK — After a 31-win season, the program’s first conference championship and NCAA Tournament victory in a quarter-century, and a turnaround at a breakneck pace, St. John’s stands across from perhaps the most anticipated season of basketball since Lou Carnesecca piloted the then-Redmen to a Final Four in 1985.

The Red Storm—a consensus Top 5 outfit in most early prognostications and No. 1 according to CBS’ Gary Parrish—afforded a throng of media and boosters a preliminary look at the hype Tuesday morning, raising the curtain ever so slightly in a 90-minute practice as summer workouts come to a close before the fall semester begins in less than a month.

“The more excitement for the fans, the better the program,” head coach Rick Pitino said of the buzz surrounding his squad before the Johnnies begin the season on November 3. “It doesn’t affect our coaching, it doesn’t affect their playing, but look: If we got the program in the third year in the Top 5 preseason, that’s awesome.”

Pitino and his staff return only one starter from last season’s Big East regular season and tournament-winning unit, senior forward Zuby Ejiofor. However, the Hall of Fame tactician landed a cadre of talent in the transfer portal that ranked among the nation’s best incoming classes, a mega-haul of sorts that he termed the “best collection of people” he has coached over 50-plus years in the game.

“I’ve had a blast this summer coaching them,” he added. “They’re such a fantastic group to coach. I can’t tell you who has the best attitude because they’re all tremendous people.”

Despite the personnel additions, a repeated criticism throughout the offseason has been who St. John’s will play at the point guard spot after the Red Storm was helmed by Daniss Jenkins and Kadary Richmond over the past two seasons. Pitino dispelled those concerns Tuesday, extolling the versatility of his present group as it plays a positionless motion offense. Two of the transfers, Cincinnati castoff Dillon Mitchell and Providence expatriate Bryce Hopkins—the latter being no stranger to St. John’s or the Big East—have led the team in assists through the summer period.

“I said this to the team: Who’s the point guard of the Knicks, the Lakers, the Celtics?” Pitino posited. “The point guard is totally done in basketball. The days of John Stockton are long gone. We just realized we have so many good athletes that we’re going to run a pointless system.”

“At the end of the summer, we didn’t expect this…Dillon Mitchell led the team in assists and Bryce Hopkins was second. So everybody handles the ball, everybody passes the ball. I think five-out has become such a big thing. I was used to it in Europe, and everybody’s running five-out offenses.”

While St. John’s looked noticeably better on the offensive end, where its shooting woes manifested at the worst possible time in its NCAA Tournament loss to Arkansas, the Red Storm defense did not sustain a major dropoff. In a full 40-minute, 5-on-5 scrimmage, the defensive end gained steam as the de facto contest went on. Pitino played Mitchell, Hopkins and Ejiofor together through most of the intrasquad scrimmage, and it is his hope that the three—along with returning sophomore Ruben Prey—can lead a physically imposing and multifaceted front line.

“They can guard one through five, which means you can switch and it makes your defense easier,” Pitino said. “Both Dillon and Bryce have gotten great at what we call body-to-body moves, after movement one-on-one. They’ve been great, very physical. Ruben’s been very big on the glass, but they’re all very, very close in ability.”

The gauntlet starts early and often for St. John’s, as the Red Storm jumps right into the fire following its opener against Quinnipiac, hosting nationally-ranked Alabama on November 8 at Madison Square Garden. Several other opportunities against ranked teams, including as many as three in the Players’ Era Festival during Thanksgiving week, await the Johnnies, whose coach devised the non-conference schedule to see exactly what he is working with as soon as possible with a roster that could potentially play 10 or 11-deep on any given night.

“I just felt that this was a veteran team that, let’s find out early on how good we are with Alabama,” Pitino remarked. “And then we’ll know what to work on to be a good tournament team at the end of the year.”

“We’re a very deep team. (Lefteris Liotopoulos) has made the upper-level national team in Greece, so he’s had a great summer. Imran (Suljanovic) will be back in six weeks (dislocated kneecap). It’s a good group. Now if they could just be as good defensively as last year, they’ll be a hell of a team.”