When Rick Pitino took over as the head coach of the St. John’s Red Storm men’s basketball program last March, the 2013 Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame inductee vowed to make Madison Square Garden their de facto home and restore it to a semblance of the prominence attained in decades past under legendary coaches Joe Lapchick, Frank McGuire and Lou Carnesecca.
The Red Storm are in the rebuilding stage in Pitino’s first season and will be at the Garden this Saturday to battle another New York program, the Fordham Rams. St. John’s enters the match up 6-3 after an 86-80 loss to former Big East Conference rival Boston College on the road. The Eagles are now in the Atlantic Coast Conference, having moved there in 2005.
Following their game against Fordham, St. John’s will begin their tough Big East schedule versus Xavier at Carnesecca Arena on the school’s Jamaica, Queens campus. Currently, there are three Big East teams ranked in the top 10 in the country—UConn (No. 5), Marquette (No. 7) and Creighton (No. 8). St. John’s was picked to place fifth in the conference in the preseason coaches’ poll, in large part based on Pitino’s track record.
The Rams, guided by second-year head coach Keith Urgo, who came to Fordham’s Bronx Rose Hill campus in 2022 after 10 years as the associate head coach for Penn State, have started this season 5-5 and finished last season 25-8, making it to the Atlantic 10 Conference tournament semifinals, in which they lost to Dayton.
The core of St. John’s team consist of transfers, including Jordan Dingle, last year’s Ivy League Player of the Year at the University of Pennsylvania, guard Daniss Jenkins, who came with Pitino from Iona after the pair won the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference title last season, and highly sought after forward Chris Ledlum, who played three years at Harvard.
The Red Storm’s leading scorer (17.9) and rebounder (10.6), center Joel Soriano, is a holdover and fifth year senior who transferred to St. John’s after playing two years for Fordham. He was a preseason First Team All Big East selection.
Pitino has been blunt about the Red Storm’s collective deficiencies, particularly on the defensive end.
“We are not going to win until we get committed to defense,” he said after his team squandered a 10-point second half lead to Boston College. “And this group is not.”
Pitino angrily underscored his players’ overemphasis and reliance on offense.
“It’s partially our fault. We recruited offensive basketball players. [And are] trying to teach 23-year-olds about defense and it cost us tonight…We’re trying to win with offense and you can’t win with offense. So we’re disappointed. Very disappointed.”