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One year after experiencing Selection Sunday heartbreak, St. John’s left nothing to chance.
The Big East regular-season and tournament champions are headed to the NCAA Tournament as the No. 2 seed in the West Region, drawing a first-round matchup Thursday against No. 15 Omaha in Providence, RI.
The Johnnies (30-4) ran roughshod over the field in the Big East Tournament, which ended Saturday night and had them waiting around Sunday as other teams played and jockeyed for the coveted top-two seeds. They gathered on campus to watch the Selection Show with the peace of mind of an automatic bid.
St. John’s was left out of March Madness in 2024 despite a late-season six-game winning streak to reach 20 victories and pushing defending — and eventual repeat — national champion UConn to the limit in the Big East Tournament semifinals. The snub caused head coach Rick Pitino to torch the NET ranking tool.
The NET hasn’t been kind again (No. 13 for a team ranked No. 6 in the Associated Press poll).
But all it took this season to know that the Red Storm are a Final Four threat was the eyeball test in explosive moments like when they connected on 14 straight field goals to turn a competitive Big East final against Creighton into a blowout. Actually, the players are thinking of bigger goals — like a national championship.
“It’s kind of no longer a dream,” Big East Player of the Year R.J. Luis Jr. recently told The Post. “It’s more of like something that is achievable. And now you think about actually the possibility of doing it, compared to last year, we were just dreaming about, oh, like hopefully you make the tournament.”
The Red Storm’s four losses — to Baylor, Georgia, Creighton and Villanova — came by a combined seven points. Only one came after the calendar turned to 2025.
St. John’s captured its first outright Big East regular-season title since 1985 and its first tournament crown since 2000 in just Pitino’s second season at the helm. Pitino became the first head coach to lead six different teams to the NCAA Tournament (Boston, Providence, Kentucky, Louisville, Iona, St. John’s).
St. John’s Clinches Big East Title
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A trio of double-figure scorers — Luis, the Big East’s Most Improved Player Zuby Ejiofor and Kadary Richmond — also were the team’s top three rebounders, and the playmaking Richmond flirted with more than one triple-double during a late-season hot streak.
The biggest obstacle on the path to a deep run could be running into an unfamiliar sharp-shooting team that runs up scores from behind the 3-point arc and at the free-throw line.
St. John’s shot 29.9 percent from downtown and 68.8 percent from the strip during the regular season — and those are weaknesses that have haunted favorites against Cinderellas for years in the NCAA Tournament.
The No. 2 seed marks St. John’s highest since 2000, when the Erick Barkley-powered team was a No. 2 seed upset by Gonzaga in the infancy of its rise to superpower. One year earlier, as a No. 3, St. John’s reached the Elite Eight and finished one win shy of its first Final Four trip since 1985.