Outside of Oziyah Sellers, the St. John’s basketball backcourt had a tough night against No. 15 Iowa State.
Sellers looked like he was going to bring the Red Storm back with a pair of 3-pointers inside the final two minutes that turned a five-point deficit into a one-point advantage, but it wasn’t meant to be for the Johnnies.
However, the outcome might have been different if St. John’s got more production from its other guards in Dylan Darling, Ian Jackson, and Joson Sanon.
The trio combined for 16 points on 5-of-20 shooting yet only managed to pull down one rebound in the 83-82 loss.
Darling fouled out with 5:09 to play and Sanon and Jackson showed their youth at multiple times during the second half, yet Rick Pitino stood by the two despite the tough performance.
“I don’t look at what individuals do when they give great effort,” Pitino explained. “Both Joson and Ian give great effort. I give the other team credit for playing great defense on them.”
“The rebounding, they’ve got to a better job of, obviously.”
It’s a conversation that St. John’s has been involved with multiple times during the first month of the season and things appeared to be improving since the preseason.
Albeit against mostly lesser competition, Ian Jackson was averaging 3.6 rebounds in his last three contests entering Monday’s game while Sanon had been pulling down 4.3 boards in the same time span.
None of that carried over against the toughness of the Cyclones and the Red Storm guards will need to find it against a Baylor team that totaled 45 rebounds, 22 offensive, in its win over Creighton.
“Sometimes it comes down to not the missed shot, it comes down to a fundamental I look at in an underneath out of bounds play playing it incorrectly or a lack of blocking out,” Pitino continued.
“Those are things you can control. You can’t control sometimes a player passing up on a [3-pointer] and taking a tough shot, that’s just a moment he’s looking to score, he’s trying hard, but you can control the things you can control like blocking out, like running balls into your hands, like throwing bounce pass instead of up top.”
It’ll be a challenge for St. John’s to try and put everything together on Tuesday afternoon (4:30 p.m. ET, truTV).