Ejiofor’s career night carries Johnnies into Big East championship game

Zuby Ejiofor slams two of his career-high 33 points as St. John’s advanced to Big East tournament championship game with decisive win over Marquette. (Photo by St. John’s Athletics)

NEW YORK — St. John’s barely broke a sweat in its Big East tournament opener Thursday, but Rick Pitino was still refusing to fully commend the Red Storm’s effort against Butler, citing the ever-present need to not rest on any laurels and consistently improve.

With only 24 hours to ready themselves for a Marquette team it had just defeated in Saturday’s regular season finale, some wondered if the Johnnies would be ready for what Shaka Smart and the Golden Eagles would throw at them. As it turned out, it was Marquette who was unprepared for what St. John’s had to offer, a 6-foot-9 big man sitting on a big game.

Zuby Ejiofor did not need to overexert himself against Butler, only contributing four points and seven rebounds on a day where teammates RJ Luis and Kadary Richmond did most of the heavy lifting. Friday’s matchup, one where the Texan had a noticeable size, strength and physicality advantage on Marquette big man Ben Gold, was a different story.

Ejiofor erupted for a career-high 33 points, and added nine rebounds in a record-setting performance as St. John’s turned an early 15-point deficit to the Golden Eagles into a commanding 79-63 runaway en route to its first Big East tournament championship game since winning the event in 2000. The masterpiece set a program record for most points in a single Big East tournament game, and is the highest output in a semifinal round since Kemba Walker during his magical national championship run with UConn in 2011.

“The big dog over here just was tremendous,” Pitino said of Ejiofor. “Last night, he got a little frustrated because he didn’t get the ball much. (Friday), he just showed unbelievable leadership. I don’t know what was better, his play or his leadership. They were both pretty extraordinary.”

“Every coach wants to have a player like him. You get blessed coaching him. I’m coaching 50 years, and there are very few Zubys that come along, that just think about the team. Whether he scores 33 or three, it’s all about the team.”

So much is the team-first mentality part of Ejiofor’s game that when pressed to comment on the transition from backup to Joel Soriano to team captain and leader by example, his first instinct was to credit those around him for bringing that side to life in his development.

“They told me to come out and be a lot more aggressive, and that’s exactly what I did,” Ejiofor said. “We want to be in these moments. This year, we’re putting ourselves in a great position to do that. When we’re playing off each other and when everybody’s locked in defensively, we’re a really scary team.”

The man tasked with stopping said scary team echoed a similar sentiment after Ejiofor—whose overtime buzzer-beater in Milwaukee sunk Marquette six days prior—made sure that shot was just the beginning of a second renaissance.

“What the best teams do is they affect the other team in a very negative way on both ends of the floor,” Shaka Smart opined. “St. John’s has been doing that all year.”

The vaunted second-year Pitino team improvement has now reached 29 wins, with one more opportunity before the NCAA Tournament, coming Saturday against Creighton in the Big East tournament championship. And if St. John’s fans have allowed themselves to look ahead to the future, so be it, but the man responsible for resurrecting the fan base is locked in on the present, with one more game of consequence before the next chapter begins.

“People keep saying to me, ‘what about this year?’” Pitino recollected. “What about this year is I’ve been so blessed to have such nice young men that I’m coaching. That, to me, is worth more than anything else.”

“This was a brilliant night for us. Now we’re in the championship game.”