St. John’s wallops Quinnipiac in season opener, offers glimpse of what Johnnies can be at peak

Dillon Mitchell led St. John’s in rout of Quinnipiac in a season opener that showed what Johnnies could be at their best. (Photo by St. John’s Athletics)

NEW YORK — Rick Pitino spent the entire week leading up to St. John’s opener against Quinnipiac intent on finding his team’s weaknesses, so that the Hall of Fame tactician could properly diagnose them as early as possible.

What he, and a capacity crowd at Carnesecca Arena found on Monday, was that when the Red Storm’s collective strengths are on full display, very few will be able to match the finished product of the fifth-ranked team in the nation.

So it was for the Johnnies, who turned their first official contest of the season into a 108-74 rout of preseason Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference favorite Quinnipiac, an affair in which five players scored 10 or more points, the roster as a whole shot 56 percent from the floor, and used its athleticism in transition to fuel a commanding 44-16 edge on fast breaks.

“We had a very intense, aggressive mentality,” Pitino said after his team bullied Quinnipiac in the paint by a 60-32 margin and forced Amarri Monroe and Jaden Zimmerman — the Bobcats’ top two players — into a combined 9-for-30 shooting display. “Overall, I can’t be more pleased. I think the two exhibition games really helped us a lot, two excellent teams that helped get us ready for two different styles of play. (Quinnipiac is) a much better team than what you saw, but our guys were just very intense and ready to play.”

“The energy coming out was good,” Dillon Mitchell added after pacing St. John’s with 18 points and seven rebounds. “I think one of our biggest emphases was not giving up any 3-point shots, really emphasizing taking away the 3-point shot. I don’t even know if they got that many attempts up in the first half. We came out, we had great energy. We ran, we pushed, we guarded, communicated.”

Pitino lamented his guards’ lack of rebounds in October’s exhibitions against Towson and Michigan, imploring his backcourt to take more of an initiative on the glass. On Monday, St. John’s guards tallied 18 of the team’s 45 caroms while the vaunted Pitino defense converted 22 Quinnipiac turnovers into 32 points, something Mitchell chalked up to an improved team chemistry and a need to assert itself in taking the ball away to create opportunities for the offense.

“That won us the game,” the forward said of the Ref Storm’s defense. “The defensive end is where it’s gonna be for us. We talk a little bit about last year’s team and how they were one of the best defensive teams in the country, and that’s the type of defense we gotta get to. I think it’s something that (will) over time. We’re understanding each other better. That’s something we’ve definitely improved the last couple weeks.”

“We just talked about winning every four minutes,” Pitino declared. “I thought we did as good a job I’ve seen since I’ve been at St. John’s of playing every four minutes. Their intensity and their mentality were awesome tonight.”

That intensity may or may not have been fueled by the coach’s own passion and competitive fire, a conflagration that has been unable to be extinguished for a half-century now, simply because of the life-or-death manner in which he approaches his job.

“I told them the other day, I said for the last 15 years, I’ve said I was retiring after the year,” Pitino revealed. “I’ve kept saying, ‘this is my last year.’ I say that to convince myself to coach as if my job is on the line every single day. I’ve never thought about retiring, but that was my mentality. I tell them that all the time, play this game as if it’s your last second, your last possession, your last game, and you’re gonna get the rewards. And they’re doing that right now.”

Another motivator came into play on Monday, a testimonial of sorts. Before the game began, the four returning players from last year’s Big East tournament championship team — seniors Zuby Ejiofor and Sadiku Ibine Ayo, along with sophomores Lefteris Liotopoulos and Ruben Prey — were presented their championship rings. The jewelry ceremony was clearly impactful to one of their newer brethren, who did not feel dismay at missing out, but rather an increased desire to win one of his own.

“Yeah, I want one,” Mitchell remarked. “I want one for all of us. When you watch that, it’s like you want to be a part of it. And we have the team to do it.”

Monday was certainly living proof. If not a coronation, it at least served as a harbinger of what to expect when St. John’s is at its best.