AJ Storr benched in second half during return game against St. John's basketball

The underrated storyline entering Saturday’s matchup between the St. John’s basketball team and Ole Miss was the return of former Red Storm guard AJ Storr to Madison Square Garden.

Storr played his freshman season with the Johnnies under head coach Mike Anderson and was invited to return to the school as a sophomore and play for Rick Pitino but opted to look elsewhere and cash in on a major NIL deal.

The Illinois native landed at Wisconsin and spent a year there before looking for another payday, which saw him join Kansas as a junior. It was a rocky season with the Jayhawks that resulted in another trip to the portal for a senior year that will be spent at Ole Miss.

The 6-foot-5 guard made headlines after each transfer as he is now on his eighth school in as many years dating back to high school.

Despite the struggling record, Storr had put up decent numbers for the Rebels entering its matchup with St. Jonn’s, averaging a team-high 13.8 points per game on 47.3-percent shooting from the floor and 52.0-percent from 3-point range, but that did not carry over to Saturday night’s 63-58 loss.

Storr spent most of the game on the bench, logging a season-low 15 minutes, after missing all six of his shot attempts. His only two points came from the free throw line in the second half after he had already missed a pair from the line in the first half.

“We’re literally just trying to get five guys on the floor to play as hard as they possibly can,” Ole Miss head coach Chris Beard said about his team after the game. “You got to go play with great effort and play well.”

Beard and Storr were at the middle of a viral moment earlier in the week when a reporter asked the player following Ole Miss' loss against Miami how the team can fix a supposed lack of effort from the team.

"You can't really do too much," Storr said before Beard interrupted and said, "Yeah, you can. We can play different players. We can play different players, that's what we did in the second half...we can fix that and it will be fixed."

St. John’s outscored Ole Miss by ten points with Storr on the court, by far the worst +/- margin on the Rebels.

After starting the game, he sat for the final 6:09 of the first half and did not start the second half. He finally entered after halftime at the 13:45 mark and was on-and-off the floor before sitting for the last 6:29 of the game.