The St. John’s basketball captain has earned another honor from the Big East as Zuby Ejiofor was named as the league’s Most Improved Player on Monday morning, one day after landing on the conference’s First Team, after capping off a remarkable regular season with an overtime buzzer beater against Marquette.
It was Ejiofor’s second buzzer beater this season as he broke the hearts of Providence fans in December to complete one of the first Red Storm comeback victories of the season.
The Kansas transfer has been a revelation for the Johnnies this season after being the backup to Joel Soriano during his first year in Queens.
Ejiofor after averaging 11.3 minutes and 4.3 points per game last season is now boasting a stat line of 31.6 minutes per contest to go along with 14.1 points, 8.2 rebounds, 1.5 assists, and 1.5 blocks per game on 57.3-percent shooting.
He is the leading offensive rebounder in the country at 4.3 boards per game and while he might not be the most talented player on the St. John’s roster, he is the most important player to the success of the Red Storm.
“If Zuby played for school ‘X’ with his statistics and his analytics, I wouldn’t have recruited him,” Rick Pitino said after St. John’s defeated Kansas State in December.
“But because he played for Bill Self, one of the premier coaches in our game, I knew he would be fundamentally sound. I knew he would know how to work hard, and that’s one of the keys to evaluating [players].”
Ejiofor struggled to find time on the floor during his freshman season with the Jayhawks with just 5.2 minutes and 1.2 points during the season.
“I’m sure he wishes he’d have him back,” Pitino joked.
The honor is St. John’s third Big East’s Most Improved Player in the last five years as Zuby Ejiofor joins Julian Champagnie (2021) and Joel Soriano (2023) to claim the title. The Red Storm have seen five of its players in the award since it was created in 1997, joining Dwight Hardy (2011) and Sir'Dominic Pointer (2015).
There could be more individual hardware coming to Queens this week as the expectation is that Rick Pitino will be named as the Big East Coach of the Year on Wednesday afternoon while RJ Luis is a major contender of the Big East Player of the Year.
St. John’s returns to the court for the Big East Tournament on Thursday afternoon (12:00 p.m., Peacock) against either Providence or Butler.