RJ Luis goes up for game-winning shot Friday as St. John’s won 10th straight, defeating UConn to continue sensational run in Rick Pitino’s second season. (Photo by Jaden Daly/Daly Dose Of Hoops)
You don’t have to like it, you don’t even have to embrace it.
What you should do, though, at the very least, is respect it.
Much was made of St. John’s ability to withstand a punch this week as the Red Storm entered arguably its two biggest tests of the season, matchups against teams in Marquette and UConn who were nationally ranked much like the Johnnies. And yet again, with criticism and skepticism on the surface, St. John’s handled it the exact same way.
It won, in a throwback fashion.
After a masterpiece on the boards Tuesday in which Marquette gave up 50 rebounds, St. John’s resorted to a throwback shutdown Friday against two-time reigning national champion UConn, negating a 14-point lead by holding the Huskies to just 36 points over the final 31-plus minutes of a 68-62 victory that likely vaults the Red Storm into a Top 10 team in the country, perhaps as high as sixth or seventh when the new polls are released Monday afternoon.
“We’ve been down before, down big, and we always find a way to fight back,” Kadary Richmond revealed as the Johnnies completed their fourth comeback of 14 points or more this season. “Just refusing to lose and having a will to win, and knowing we’re one of the best teams out here, we’re gonna keep on working, being humble and being who we are.”
The will to win, an infectious spirit that has been expounded upon both in this space and several other outlets, has manifested itself organically in Rick Pitino’s second season on the corner of Union and Utopia. The uptick in year two under his aegis has also been monitored closely, but the motivation boils down to nothing more than a greater desire, says RJ Luis.
“I think we look at the ball as food,” the junior wing posited. “We’re trying to just take it. Like I said, I feel like we’re a bunch of dogs. We play hard, and we just want it more than them. When you’ve got people like that around you that want to push you every day, you want to push back. I feel like all the guys do that very well.”
Perhaps no one has wanted it more than Luis as this fairytale season has progressed. In Big East play, from the 8-minute mark of the second half to the final buzzer, the UMass transfer is shooting 55 percent (22-for-40) from the floor down the stretch. If that isn’t impressive enough, Luis has ratcheted up the clutch gene in his last six games, making 13 of his last 17 attempts in that stretch from the final 8:00 on. His magnum opus may have come Friday, with the shot clock winding down in the final seconds of regulation. Assistant coach Bob Walsh called a baseline out of bounds play that Pitino termed a “five-down counter,” delivering the ball to Luis inside the right corner with a tight three-second window to execute. A flawless exchange, the shot splashed through the net, furthering one of those forever runs and solidifying the Red Storm’s grip on the Big East standings.
“He had the right guy shooting the ball,” Pitino said of Walsh’s tactics. “(Luis) never met a shot he didn’t like, and there was no doubt in my mind he was gonna make the shot. I was 100 percent sure he would make the shot. There’s no better scorer, I think, in the Big East than RJ.”
Luis was the hero in that moment, but he also knew the job—as Richmond suggested after the Marquette win three days prior—was not finished.
“It was just straight adrenaline,” he countered. “I knew I made the shot, but the game wasn’t over until the buzzer sounds. We came out swinging, we came out fighting hard like we always do. All the guys want to win. We’re very hungry.”
St. John’s now has the second-best defense in the nation, per Ken Pomeroy’s metrics, after placing UConn in the proverbial vise on Friday. Only Tennessee, who the Red Storm would have met in the Baha Mar Hoops Championship had it not lost to Baylor, owns a more efficient defense by the numbers.
“We’re playing great basketball right now,” Pitino admitted. “Our defense is one of the best in the country, we’re getting better offensively. This team has a unique ability to create possessions. We’ve done a great job defensively of coming together each and every game. We know that’s our common denominator, and I’m proud of this.”
The hall of fame coach has stressed humility among his players in the midst of the program’s best season since the halcyon days of 1985, citing it as the biggest factor in the current success. But if you told him he would be presiding over a 21-3 team, with its three losses coming by a grand total of five points and two of those three defeats coming under noticeable scrutiny, how would he react?
“I would have said, ‘how the fuck did we lose that one game?’” Pitino quipped. “I’m proud of the guys. Everybody from St. John’s is behind us, we’ve got everybody on board. We are putting it all together, putting the Garden together with the fans. This is a total team effort, and we’ve got a great team right now. I’m proud of everybody, top to bottom. We’ve got it going right now and we’re not gonna let it slide one bit.”
In all sports, it doesn’t matter how you win. All that matters is that you win. St. John’s has demonstrated that this season with its atypical style. What the Red Storm lacks in style points, it overcompensates for with a nuts-and-bolts resume that makes any basketball purist proud of the finished product. Pitino bristled at the notion of those who doubt his team’s potential, highlighting one common goal, even if the rough edges surrounding it would not win a beauty pageant.
With a mindset like that, in a notoriously blue-collar city that embraces its own and unabashedly backs its lunchpail mentality, it does not have to be loved. It should, however, at the very least, be appreciated.
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