Rick Pitino talks about St. John’s defying analytics, but by how much? A closer look inside the numbers

NEW YORK — At various points during this renaissance season for St. John’s, you may have heard Rick Pitino mention the unusually high variance between typical analytics and how his Red Storm team has managed to buck almost every statistical trend through a campaign that has yielded a 22-4 record to date, the four losses coming by a grand total of just seven points.

Pitino spoke from the same pulpit Sunday after St. John’s used its unique style and shutdown defense to fend off Creighton and give itself a two-game lead in the Big East standings with five games to play, prompting a rehash of a brand of basketball that, in some circles, must be seen to be truly believed.

“I think you guys are looking at some basketball history,” he said to open his postgame press conference. “When you see a team shoot 38 (percent) from the field, 33 from three and 58.6 from the free throw line, you’re gonna lose by double digits. But every single night, this team wins. It’s an amazing thing. I think it’s because they get more possessions, they work so hard at the defensive end.”

With St. John’s limitations shooting the ball from 3-point range—the Red Storm’s 29 percent mark from distance ranks 344th in the nation among 364 Division I teams—the defense takes on a much more important role than it normally would, even in an already defense-oriented culture like Pitino’s. Field goal percentage defense, a statistic Pitino’s associate head coach, Steve Masiello, consistently valued as the head coach at Manhattan, has done some of the best work in bridging the gap. The Red Storm has held opponents to just 40 percent shooting for the year, 23rd-best in the nation and tops in the Big East. Among schools from the Power 5 conferences, that number ranks 10th-most efficient. So what exactly drives the bus when the Johnnies do not have the ball in their hands? Creighton head coach Greg McDermott, now with a two-game sample size to guide him, credits the relentless pressure St. John’s places on the ball.

“They’ve got a lot of guys to put pressure on the rim,” McDermott said, citing the impact of Zuby Ejiofor in particular, but also Aaron Scott and RJ Luis at various points in games. “We had a hard time holding our spot. We got knocked off our spot too often. Their defense is outstanding. They wear into you over time (with) their physicality, their toughness. The pressure, as the game wears on, it wears into you a little bit.”

For the season, St. John’s has used that pressure to average 9.3 steals per game (tied for 16th-best in the nation and fourth among Power 5 teams behind only Missouri, Marquette and Iowa State), and has forced turnovers at a 22.1 percent clip. In layman’s terms, the Red Storm is essentially coming up with a takeaway on two of every nine possessions. Since 2010, four teams have won national championships with a defensive turnover percentage of 20 or higher: Duke in 2009-10 (21.3 percent), Pitino’s 2012-13 Louisville squad (27.1), Villanova in 2015-16 (20.6), and Baylor in the COVID-shortened 2020-21 year (24.4).

The common thread there? All four of those teams had Top 10 offenses per KenPom in those respective seasons, where St. John’s presently ranks 78th, which would be far and away the lowest-ranked offense to cut down the net if the Johnnies do make it that far. That is where the aura truly lies.

“I think what you’re seeing is an amazing thing,” Pitino reiterated. “What you’re seeing from this team is truly amazing. They’ve gone through a lot of serious injuries but they’ve never wavered. It’s been that next man up mentality, but what I like is we’ve never wavered with our discipline of the way you should be. It takes time to build a team, and even with the injuries, this team never wavered with their work ethic. They’re getting to know. They’ve arrived. Because of the way we play, with five turnovers (against Creighton), meticulous with the rebounding down the stretch, it’s very special.”

“There are a lot of ways to win basketball games,” McDermott shared. “They’ve certainly found a great recipe with this group.”

With the Red Storm’s best start since the legendary 1985 Final Four season still intact, it has been a common refrain for Pitino and his players to reflect on how special this particular journey has been, with Kadary Richmond adding that the results and buzz enveloping New York is the vibe he craved upon transferring from Seton Hall. But from an outsider’s perspective, the return of a traditional power to its former perch, even at the expense of his own program to an extent, has lifted the profile of all parties involved.

“It’s great for our league for St. John’s to be good,” McDermott said. “I don’t want them to be as great as us, but (Sunday), they were better. But it’s awesome for our league to have the Garden full for a Big East regular season game when a team from the Midwest comes out. We didn’t bring 4,000 fans here, it was St. John’s fans that packed the place. It’s awesome for the conference, and they’ve played at a very consistent level.”

“When you think about the games that they’ve lost, this is a team that is a whisker away from not having a loss, or maybe having one loss and being one of the top teams in the country. When you can guard, that travels. It travels on the road, it travels in the Big East tournament. It’s gonna be great in the NCAA Tournament when you can defend with the physicality that they do.”

The defense has the analytics to back it up, but at the same time, has an old-school axiom that buoys it even stronger. It has always been said that hard work beats talent when talent does not work hard, but this St. John’s team—with no disrespect to anyone it has beaten—proves it on a nightly basis.

“I’ve never, in my lifetime, coached a team like this,” Pitino recollected. “I’ve never seen these types of statistics and this much winning, ever. It defies all statistical logic, but that tells you how good they are with effort. You guys are witnessing something very, very special.”