Rick Pitino sounded like a head coach that watched his team squander a 19-point second half lead at home for a bad loss to a Quad 3 opponent, instead of the one that had Kadary Richmond save the day in the final seconds for the St. John’s basketball team.
“I don’t think my guys understand me. I’m really unhappy with them,” Pitino said after the 68-66 victory.
“We just kept breaking our defensive routine of what we were supposed to do.”
St. John’s (19-3, 10-1 Big East) used a stretch spanning the end of the first half to the midway point of the second half in which Providence shot 5-of-16 from the field to build a 19-point lead, 53-34, before seeing the Friars (11-11, 5-6 Big East) finish the game 10-of-13 with six 3-pointers.
“That was a losing way to play defense at the end of the game,” Pitino added.
The charge was led by Jabri Abdur-Rahim, who finished with a career-high 27 points on 8-of-11 shooting from 3-point range.
“Because we’re concerned about missing free throws, it affected our defense down the stretch, and that’s why I’m very disappointed. They think I’m going to jump up and down and congratulate [them saying] what a great win, it’s just the opposite.”
However, Richmond was there to save the day for the No. 15 Johnnies with a free throw line jump shot with 3.0 seconds on the clock to cap off his best performance with the Red Storm – 24 points, eight rebounds, eight assists, and three steals.
“You lose games when you don’t pay attention to your job, and they didn’t pay attention to their job, so we’re very fortunate and very pleased we won, but very disappointed in the way we played down the stretch.
St. John’s will be tested greatly on offense and defense this week when hosting No. 9 Marquette (18-4, 9-2 Big East) on Tuesday (6:30 p.m. ET, FS1) and traveling to No. 25 UConn (16-6, 8-3 Big East) on Friday (8:00 p.m. ET, FOX).
“It’s always better to learn from winning from losing,” Pitino added. “I don’t feel good right now because of the way we played the game.”
“If I go in [the locker room] and smile and be happy, we’re going to take an ‘L’ somewhere because we didn’t do our job listening defensively, and when you don’t do your job defensively, you lose.”
St. John’s has done its job for the last month, winners of eight straight games, but things will become much more challenging soon.