After a 9-5 start this season, the St. John’s Red Storm men’s basketball team, piloted by Hall of Fame head coach Rick Pitino, went 19-1 in their last 20 games, becoming the first team to win back-to-back Big East regular-season and tournament titles. They head into the NCAA Tournament 28-6 and No. 10 in the AP Top 25 rankings. Yet they were illogically designated a No. 5 seed in the East Region.
The Red Storm open the tournament tomorrow (7:10 p.m. EST tip-off) against the Northern Iowa Panthers (23-12), the region’s No. 12 seed. And if being a No. 5 is an insult, the injury is that the Johnnies and their fans have to travel all the way across the country to San Diego, California, where the game is being played at Viejas Arena. They could have been scheduled to play in Philadelphia or Buffalo, other East region locations that are much closer to St. John’s home borough of Queens. But the NCAA selection committee did them no favors.
If the Red Storm defeat Northern Iowa, they will play the winner of the matchup between the East’s No. 4 seed Kansas Jayhawks and the No. 13 California Baptist Lancers (25-8) on Sunday for a chance to advance to the Sweet 16. Fellow Big East member, the University of Connecticut (29-5), the No. 7-ranked team in the country, which St. John’s decisively beat on Saturday by 72-52 in the Big East Tournament championship game, is the East Region’s No. 2 seed. They will play No. 15 Furman (22-12) at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia on Friday (10:00 p.m.).
The Big East, which this season placed just three teams in the NCAA Tournament — its lowest number since 1993 — with Villanova being the third, had what, for them, was a down season. Yet St. John’s warranted more respect. The same could be said about Seton Hall, which was 21-12 and 10-10 in conference games, failing to make the cut.
“I’ll be honest with you, I told these guys in the locker room, I think if the committee really sits down and has, you know, good minds in there like I know they do,” said Seton Hall head coach Shaheen Holloway following his team’s 78-68 loss to St. John’s last Friday in the Big East Tournament. “If they look at our resume and look at what we did, and our body of work is really good, it’s way better than a lot of people.”
“When [they say] on the bubble, I’m not sure why our league’s not getting the recognition that we deserve.” The Queens native was named the Big East Coach of the Year.
UConn Huskies head coach Dan Hurley agreed with Holloway when asked by the AmNews whether Seton Hall deserved to be the fourth Big East team in the tournament. “Yes,” he unhesitatingly replied.
“Every team in our league is basically a top-100 team efficiency-wise,” Hurley explained. “There’s a lot of manipulation that goes on…and they have so many games that are so close to being a Quad 1 (Quadrant), Quad 2, where we had programs just miss that net threshold of top-75 where they easily could have three or four Quad 1 wins if we didn’t have some under-performances in the non-conference that became land mines for them.
“I mean, [Seton Hall’s] non-conference schedule was absolutely NCAA-caliber. Then they got to the semifinals of the Big East Tournament and 20-plus wins. If they’re in the NCAA tournament, they will win a game. So, hell yeah, Seton Hall has the quality of an NCAA tournament team.”
Quad refers to the tier of teams. Quad 1 is generally defined as teams ranked in the top 30. Rankings, analytics, and metrics are the primary determinants used by the selection committee to determine at-large bids (teams that do not receive automatic bids by winning their conference tournament). For example, record, strength of schedule, and opponents’ strength of schedule.
Seton Hall did not receive an NCAA Tournament bid. By comparison, the Texas Longhorns, who finished 18-14 and 9-9 in the Southeastern Conference, good for 10th place, did.
“I don’t understand it. I think if they look at our body of work. I thought we went out, I thought we challenged ourselves. I thought we did well in our league,” Holloway added.
Pitino stated that despite St. John’s surge over the past two months, he did not expect a No. 3 or No. 4 seed.
“We’re very pleased with No. 5, difficult travel, but we’ll get out there and make the best of it,” Pitino said. “We’re excited to be part of this. We’re playing really good basketball right now. We played three tough Big East opponents.
“We had three tough games, and we had to [go to] Seton Hall, play Seton Hall again [on consecutive Friday nights]. We played Providence, and we played Connecticut. So right now we’re playing good basketball, and that’s the most important thing: not who are you playing, but make sure you’re playing good basketball.”