The recent conference wins that the St. John’s basketball team has landed have almost defied logic on the offensive end of the floor.
The Red Storm have made a total of nine 3-pointers in its four Big East games this season and its comeback victory on the road against Providence combined poor shooting from the permitter with atrocious free throw shooting.
It’s like in school; Rick Pitino’s team is getting the right answer to the equation but needs to change the method in which it arrived at that answer and he knows it.
“To be quite honest, it defies all the metrics of the game what we are doing,” Pitino said last week before his team would defeat Butler at home despite a 1-for-21 shooting night from 3-point range.
“Winning like we are winning is very difficult.”
St. John’s only has two players, center Zuby Ejiofor and seldom used role player Sadiku Ibine Ayo, that have hit 3-pointers in the last two games and it’s unsustainable for the Johnnies to continue to win like this if the percentages from deep do not rise.
“You’d like to his eight [3-pointers] in one game…but take the flip side, it’s very impressive what they are doing without it.”
The Red Storm are 9-of-58 (15.5-percent) from 3-point range in conference play with its only positive night shooting the ball over the last three weeks was its final non-conference game against Delaware, making 8-of-12 attempts.
“We’re sort of like a football team that runs the ball a lot, plays great defense, and occasionally plays great defense to keep [the opponent] honest,” Pitino added.
It’s something that is on the minds of the players, but Pitino and his coaching staff are keeping everyone’s confidence high that the shots will start to fall.
“You know, we’re still winning,” Aaron Scott said on Monday. “I think people forget that we’re still winning.”
“It’s impressive but I’m not surprised,” Scott said about the team continuing to find ways to win despite its shooting struggles.
“We got a team full of dawgs, a team full of hard workers…We’ve been doing all the other at a great pace where 3-point shooting is that if we are missing shots, it’s okay.”
St. John’s (12-3, 3-1 Big East) will try and pick up its first Quad 1 victory of the season on Tuesday night (6:30 pm. ET, FS1) in Cincinnati when it takes on Xavier (9-6, 1-3 Big East).