The St. John’s basketball team held steady this week in the Associated Press Top-25 Poll after spilitting its games.
Following its No. 9 ranking, the highest in program history since the 1999-2000 season, the Johnnies lost a heartbreaker on the road against Villanova, 73-71, to snap a 10-game winning streak before responding with a victory over then-No. 24 Creighton on Sunday afternoon at Madison Square Garden.
As a result, the Red Storm (22-4, 13-2 Big East) clocked in at No. 10 this week in the poll.
It marked the first time St. John’s has spent consecutive weeks inside the Top-10 of the AP Poll since the 1998-99 season.
Marquette (19-6, 10-4 Big East) is the only other Big East team that is ranked this week at No. 16 after the Bluejays dropped out following its losses against UConn and the Johnnies.
The Red Storm have been ranked seven times this season, which is the most times the program has been in the poll since 1999-00 when it won the Big East Tournament Championship – although two of those weeks included the preseason and postseason poll.
It is also the fifth straight week that St. John’s has been ranked in the AP Top-25, something that has not been done by the Johnnies since the 2014-15 season.
The Johnnies were also included on Saturday’s NCAA Tournament Top-16 seeds reveal as the No. 4 seed in the East Region, the No. 16 overall seed.
Rick Pitino will lead his team into two critical games this week as the Storm attempts to put a further stranglehold on the Big East, holding a two-game lead in the conference’s regular season standings, with a road matchup against DePaul (11-15, 2-13 Big East) on Wednesday night (9:00 p.m. ET, FS1) and its second meeting of the season with the UConn Huskies (17-8, 9-5 Big East) at Madison Square Garden on Sunday afternoon (12:00 p.m. ET, FOX).