The St. John’s basketball team is ready to move on from its debacle against UConn on Wednesday night in Hartford.
Frankly, they have no other choice with its regular season title and No. 1 seed in the Big East Tournament hopes hanging in the balance.
“I feel this is the most important game of the three-year span that I’ve been here,” Rick Pitino said on Friday of the Red Storm’s matchup against Villanova on Saturday night. “I think there are about seven variables that are crucial for this game.”
The Johnnies beat Villanova in its first matchup of the season, 86-79, which was the fourth game of its eventual 13-game winning streak.
Rick Pitino explained that he typically watches the film of every game at least two times since he took the job at St. John’s, but he never turned on the tape of its 32-point loss.
“This was the only time in three years I didn’t watch the film and wouldn’t watch it and will never watch it,” he continued.
“I think they’re very disappointed They’re very embarrassed, and there’s no reason to carry it on any further…They are just as disappointed in the way they played as I am.”
Its players have tuned out the chatter about the game on social media and kept the focus on the guys in the locker room.
“We’re still in a fight for something,” Dillon Mitchell explained. “It’s one loss, it was a bad night for us.”
While Rick Pitino might not have watched the film of the UConn loss, the players and assistant coaches did.
“We watched some of our mistakes…but we got a game coming up a few days later, so we have to get our minds right for that,” Oziyah Sellers said.
“People want to see how we respond to [the UConn loss], if we’re able to respond to this or if we crumble and I feel like none of us have that personality and I feel like we’ll be able to bounce back the right way.”
There are just three games remaining in the regular season for St. John’s and it will likely need to win all three to be the conference’s regular season champions and have the chance to be the top seed in the Big East Tournament.
“I think they want to prove that was just a terrible night, but they know they have to play great to beat Villanova,” Pitino added.