It’s been a fairly good time to be a sports fan with roots from Queens. Juan Soto’s a Met, and he’s already hit a spring training homer. The Islanders, who now play in an arena adjacent to a race track whose footprint extends over the city line into the borough, have been on a hot streak that has them somehow competing for a playoff spot. And then, of course, there’s St. John’s.
It was already shaping up to a be a banner year for the Red Storm, as it was Rick Pitino’s second year at his seventh college coaching job in a career that has now spanned half a century. At every single previous stop where he made it to a second season the team’s record improved. And considering they had won 20 games in 2023-24 it made this year’s bar that much higher.
Well, we’re not even at the end of February and Pitino’s already eclipsed that total, and yesterday that fever propelled a great deal of those who normally covene on the campus at the corner of Utopia Parkway and Union Turnpike onto the Q44A bus (at least that used to be what the number was) to take the F train (at least that’s what the letter used to be) to within walking distance of Madison Square Garden, where they took a giant step toward even greater prominence. Per CBS SPORTS’ Gary Parrish:
One more win.
That’s all it will take for St. John’s to secure a share of its first Big East regular-season title since 1992 — just one more win (or one more Creighton loss, to be exact). So, like I said on Sunday’s episode of the Eye On College Basketball podcast, after St. John’s beat UConn 89-75 to improve to 24-4 overall and 15-2 in the league, this is happening.
St. John’s is going to be a Big East champion — either a co-champion for the first time since 1992 or an outright champion for the first time since 1985. And, at this point, an outright conference championship is the more likely scenario.
“We want this Big East crown badly,” said St. John’s coach Rick Pitino, “not only for the players but [also] for the fans who came back.”
Boy, have the fans ever come back. Did you see Madison Square Garden on Sunday? It was filled to capacity and mostly red, which hasn’t always been the case when UConn visits. But, yes, the back-to-back champs’ fans were outnumbered at MSG this time, which is one of many ways to illustrate how far Pitino has taken the Red Storm in just two short years.
And as THE NEW YORK POST’s enthusiastic beat writer
Less than three weeks ago, as St. John’s was wrapping up an impressive victory over Marquette, its giddy fans began a chant.
“We Want UConn!” they roared. “We Want UConn!”
The reaction by some on social media: Are you sure about that?
The two-time defending national champion Huskies were getting star freshman Liam McNeeley back from an ankle injury, and were still within striking distance of the first-place Johnnies.
Two matchups later, St. John’s fans may need to shoot higher than UConn.
With Sunday’s 89-75 beatdown at a sold-out Garden, 10th-ranked St. John’s swept its rival for the first time since 1999-2000 and inched closer to the program’s first outright Big East regular-season crown since 1985. The Johnnies have won three straight and 13 of 14. With a win Wednesday at Butler, the Red Storm would clinch a share of the title.
And as Parrish noted, that win has already paid immediate dividends, at least according to him:
St. John’s moved to No. 8 in Monday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings, which resulted in Iowa State and Wisconsin being pushed down one spot each, no fault of their own.
In a season already tinged with warm fuzzies as it memorializes the coach that delivered that 1985 regular season crown Lou Carnesseca, who passed weeks short of his centennial last December, it’s days like yesterday that are anoniting Pitino to the level of Italian amore not seen among the St. John’s faithful since then, and the expectations for this team to perhaps even equal those of the team from 40 years ago grow even higher.
And at this point, who’s to say that couldn’t happen? With so many SEC teams poised to potentially exhaust each other in the coming weeks as they jockey for position in that conference? With Duke, admittedly cakewalking to an ACC title, being led by an 18-year-old who hasn’t played for a title beyond the state lines of Florida and Maine?
I do know this much. Men’s college basketball needs all the help it can get to regain some degree of momentum that it lost amidst the year of Caitlin Clark they faced last year. Connecticut running it back in the manner they did didn’t help. A run from a team that apparently now owns New York, led by someone as recognizable and storied as Pitino, will definitely help.
The Islanders’ run to relevance has already stumbled out of the starting gate of the season’s final lap with a crucial loss last night at UBS to Dallas. Juan Soto has plenty of time both this year and through the next decade to make his own noise. It’s St. John’s world for the taking right now, and both New York and indeed the game, can be its oyster.
Courage…