Immediately after the St. John’s basketball team beat Xavier on Saturday afternoon in Cincinnati, Rick Pitino defended the officials. He was asked about the call the fouled-out Zuby Ejiofor and said he told him to stop complaining because he committed the foul.
However, after watching the film not only has Pitino changed his stance on Ejiofor’s fifth foul, but he also disagrees with three other calls against his superstar.
“Look at four of the five fouls of Zuby, and I will say he didn’t touch [the opposing player] four out of five times,” Pitino said over Zoom on Tuesday as No. 25 St. John’s (15-5, 8-1 Big East) prepares to host Butler (13-7, 4-5 Big East) on Wednesday night (7:00 p.m. ET, Peacock).
“Here’s your best player, the MVP of the league, so incidental contact of any player – great player or not – you shouldn’t be calling, but he didn’t touch him four of the five fouls.”
Ejiofor fouled out on a call that put Filip Borovicanin at the free throw line to complete a three-point play. It gave Xavier an 82-81 lead with 1:12 remaining, but the Red Strom were bailed out by a 3-pointer from Dylan Darling and second chance layup by Ruben Prey, Ejiofor’s replacement, to win 88-83.
“Now fortunately for us, we got Ruben Prey. A lot of teams don’t have Ruben Prey, so it hurts them when you foul out some of your best players.”
Pitino also mentioned that Zuby Ejiofor “didn’t touch the player” on two of his foul calls against Seton Hall earlier in the week, which had him sit for a majority of the second half as the Red Storm rallied to win.
“So, it’s very frustrating right now. I’m not one to bi**h about the officiating, I’m just not into that at all, but I will say three of the fouls did not exist at all. The fourth one was questionable,” he continued.
Saturday was the first time that Ejiofor had ever fouled out of a game.
“So, all you can do is hope the officials, first of all, call it correctly but call it in your area.”
Pitino referenced last week’s ending between Xavier and Creighton in which the Bluejays were awarded two free throws with 4.3 seconds left and eventually won the game off a putback on the second missed free throw.
He did admit that he might be biased in using that game as an example because his son, Richard, is the head coach of the Musketeers.
“I think there’s a lot of frustrations in the league with foul calls from a lot of coaches, but I’m not going to join that chorus,” he added. “Incidental contact needs not to be called.”
Rick Pitino also said he would like to add to the challenge rule put into college basketball this season that you could be able to challenge whether or not a foul was committed.
The rule currently states that coaches are only allowed to challenge out-of-bounds calls, basket interference or goaltending, and whether a secondary defender was in the restricted-area arc.
In order to challenge a team must have at least one timeout. If they lose their initial challenge, they lose the ability to review a play for the remainder of the game and are charged a timeout. If a team wins a challenge, they get to retain that challenge for one more use – regardless of win or lose – as well as keeping its timeout.