The St. John’s basketball team is confident entering the Big East Tournament. It defeated every team in the league at least once and took the regular season title by three games.
Most NCAA Tournament projections have the Johnnies as a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament but Evan Miyakawa, a college basketball analytics guru, thinks the Red Storm could crack the 2-seed line with a strong performance at Madison Square Garden.
“They can absolutely get a 2-seed,” he told Storm The Paint this week. “I think they would need to make the Big East semifinals at a minimum, but realistically at least the title game in order to not get passed by other teams.”
The Red Storm currently sit at No. 16 in the NET rankings with a combined record of 14-4 in Quad 1 and Quad 2 games. St. John’s was a 4-seed, No. 16 overall, in the NCAA Tournament Top-16 reveal in February.
“There’s no way St. John’s is worse than a 3-seed, in my opinion,” he said.
As for Rick Pitino and his players, they are fully consumed with sweeping the Big East titles this season.
“We better win it or I’m going to jump in the East River,” Pitino joked during his interview with NBC New York’s Bruce Beck.
“The Big East Tournament we are primed for,” he continued. “We know what to expect.”
St. John’s landed a quarterfinal victory for the first time since 2000 last season against Seton Hall but fell to the eventual Big East and National Champion UConn Huskies in the semifinals.
“That's our goal,” Zuby Ejiofor said on Wednesday afternoon at Madison Square Garden. “We set a goal before the season, and we accomplished that goal. This is yet another goal that we have in mind to win the Big East Tournament.”
Ejiofor, named as an All-Big East First Team selection as well as the conference’s Most Improved Player, was on hand to see his roommate, RJ Luis, be presented with the Big East Player of the Year Award.
“Pressure is great. It obviously comes with success,” Luis explained. “Obviously, if we didn't want to have this type of pressure, we would have never won the regular season championship. We would have never been ranked sixth in the nation.”
St. John’s begins its run at winning its first Big East Championship since 2000 on Thursday afternoon (12:00 p.m. ET, Peacock) against Butler.