Rick Pitino has worked magic with the St. John’s basketball program since his arrival in Queens, but the team’s success hasn’t come overnight.
It took almost five months during his first season to get rolling. Last year, which ended in one of the school’s most successful campaigns, had a rocky opening month.
A loss against No. 15 Alabama, albeit giving up 103 points, is not the end of the world or the death of this team.
Do things have to be corrected? Of course, but a team scoring 96 points and showing fight after rallying from multiple double-digit deficits against the Crimson Tide is a good place to start.
A year ago, St. John’s ‘warm up’ game was against New Mexico – a team not in the same stratosphere as Alabama – inside Madison Square Garden before heading to the Bahamas for a disastrous trip that yielded two dramatic losses.
After returning the United States, the Red Storm only lost twice for the remainder of the regular season.
Kadary Richmond, the team’s prized offseason addition, didn’t find his rhythm until December and really got rolling in January. The offense struggled and the defense was still a work in progress before rounding into form for conference play.
“We did a lot of good things,” Pitino explained after the 7-point loss.
“I think we have the potential to be an outstanding basketball team, but, as a head coach, I need to find out where our deficiencies lie, and I found out tonight. But I also found out that they are a group of guys that want to win badly, they just didn’t know how to do it tonight.”
Things will take time to gel with this version of the Storm as well, but the good news is that its non-conference schedule will be littered with opportunities to land marquee victories.
“We’re going to have our opportunities to play Iowa State and Baylor and Ole Miss and Kentucky, and we’re going to learn a lot from this game,” Pitino added.
“Our guys played hard. I told them in the locker room, ‘Look, they were the better team tonight. Don’t hang your heads, they were the better team.’”
Certainly St. John’s loss puts more pressure on the Johnnies heading into the Players Era Invitational in Las Vegas in two weeks but it’s clear that this team has the talent to succeed and the right man at the helm to maximize that potential.