St. John’s Red Storm forward Dillon Mitchell (white jersey) goes for a layup, as he’s guarded by multiple Michigan Wolverine defenders during Saturday’s exhibition game at Madison Square Garden in New York, NY. Photo Courtesy: St. John’s Red Storm via X
Hello everyone, in anticipation of the upcoming college basketball season in this first edition of “Red Storm Basketball Wire” I will give you a breakdown of how the St. John’s Red Storm finished out their preseason campaign and what they should work on before the season gets underway.
After starting their preseason with a 76-63 victory over the Towson Tigers at home, Rick Pitino’s Red Storm were eager to finish out the preseason undefeated. Until they were challenged by Dusty May’s Michigan Wolverines in “The Bad Boy Mowers Series” on Oct. 25. With 13,287 rowdy college basketball fans in attendance at Madison Square Garden, the pressure was too much for St. John’s to handle as they lost 96-94 in overtime to their opponent.
The exhibition game highlighted some of the Red Storm’s more prominent strengths and weaknesses. For instance, they excelled when it came to scoring in the paint, but it was a different story from beyond the arc. St. John’s played tight defense during certain moments, but gave up too many points during others.
Here’s five key takeaways, plus live footage.
- St. John’s center and team captain Zuby Ejiofor led his team with 24 points, six rebounds and five assists, but didn’t do enough to surpass Yaxel Lendeborg, who guided his squad with a 25-point and 10-rebound double-double.
- In overtime St. John’s sophomore guard Lefteris Liotopoulos became an unsung hero by engineering an eight-point scoring run all by himself. However, with a chance to put his team in the lead at the foul line after being fouled on a three point shot, Liotopoulos made just one before missing the next two
- Red Storm senior guard Oziyah Sellers played just eight minutes and didn’t record a single statistic, quite surprising coming from a player who made 45.1% of his field goal attempts last season. His night ended prematurely as he fouled out during the second half.
- St. John’s guard and Bronx native Ian Jackson ended with two points after going 1-for-8 from the field. This isn’t such a good look for a player many fans had high hopes for. However, fellow guard Dylon Darling rejuvenated the offense with a crucial layup during the first half, showing his capability of being a potential offensive threat.
- Overall Pitino’s Red Storm shot 39.7 % from the field, 12.5 % lower than Michigan’s 52.2 %. The Wolverines made 42.1 % of their three pointers, while St. John’s hit just 17.4% of theirs.
Looking Ahead
With a 1-1 finish to the preseason, Pitino has to prepare his Red Storm for the start of the season. It’s become evident that the team lacks consistent shooting and defense from some of their more prominent players, which is something the coaching staff should work on throughout these next couple of days.
St. John’s starts their season at Carnesecca Arena on Nov. 3 against the Quinnipiac Bobcats. This shouldn’t be much of a challenge because they took down this team last year by 23 points. However, this is just the start of a jam-packed non-conference schedule with later games coming against Alabama, Ole Miss, Iona, Louisville and Kentucky. The Red Storm will need to win most if not all of these games if they want to have a chance at competing in the NCAA tournament in March of next year. Many believe St. John’s will be able to leave most of these games victorious, but only they can make our predictions come to fruition.
That’s all for today’s edition of “Red Storm Men’s Basketball Wire” make sure to stay tuned for next week’s newsletter by following us on Tik Tok and X to keep up with our daily coverage of the team.
Thank you so much and until next time this is Dean Koutouratsas.
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