St. John’s ‘pick your poison’ approach leads to another win. Can anyone slow them down?

NEW YORK — The opening tip was secured by St. John’s, and what unfolded during the ensuing 25 seconds might well be remembered as the most interesting stretch of an otherwise lopsided Big East Tournament quarterfinal between the Red Storm and Butler, an overmatched and under-talented challenger that only managed three points in the first seven minutes and never truly recovered from there.

But with that initial possession came at least a sliver of intrigue when examined through the wider lens of this St. John’s season at large. The ninth-seeded Bulldogs, who defeated Georgetown in Wednesday’s opening round, unveiled an aggressive 1-3-1 zone that stationed gangly, long-limbed forward Patrick McCaffery (6-9, 215 pounds) near midcourt as the tip of their metaphorical spear. It caught the Red Storm by surprise, according to head coach Rick Pitino, and sure enough the first few passes gave way to an ill-advised 3-point heave from point guard Kadary Richmond, a dismal 19.4% perimeter shooter. The ball clanked off the bottom of the backboard without so much as grazing the rim. “Pass the ball!” Pitino shouted from his perch near midcourt, well beyond the coaching box that has never effectively contained him. Butler corralled the defensive rebound and took off in the other direction.

“St. John’s is such a rhythm team,” Butler head coach Thad Matta said. “I mean, they’re going to do what they do. And if they don’t get what they want, then they just have some unbelievable one-on-one players. We thought the zone could slow them down a little bit.”

In that moment — the briefest of interludes, as it turned out — the Bulldogs had probed what many perceive to be the only weakness for an otherwise incredible St. John’s team, winners of the outright Big East regular season title for the first time since 1985, which was also the last time anyone in a Red Storm uniform hoisted the league’s Player of the Year trophy until shooting guard RJ Luis Jr. enjoyed that opportunity earlier this week. But despite all the accolades that St. John’s has already amassed in Pitino’s second season at the helm, a list that includes Pitino himself earning the conference’s Coach of the Year award for the first time in his prodigious career, the Red Storm are still among the worst 3-point shooting teams in the country. Pitino’s team entered Thursday’s matinee with Butler making just 29.9% of its attempts from beyond the arc, a rate that ranked 344th out of 364 teams in Division I.

What would happen, critics wondered, if St. John’s encountered an opponent that simply dared the Red Storm to fire away from beyond the arc, be that in the Big East Tournament or any March Madness environment to come? What would happen, those same folks wondered, if the Red Storm’s season-long perimeter drought ran extra dry when it suddenly mattered most? “They’re the best team in the league at what they do,” former UConn head coach Jim Calhoun said in a conversation with FOX Sports on Wednesday evening. “But you wonder about the shooting.”

Being the best in the league at what they do has meant badgering opponents with unending waves of defensive pressure — sometimes of the frenetic, full-court variety — and then battering them on the glass and in the paint alike, an antidote that guided them to 27 regular-season wins and the No. 1 seed at Madison Square Garden this week despite such a paltry 3-point percentage. Pitino’s replacement for effective perimeter shooting has been to imbue his team with toughness, tenacity and sheer force of will.

And so even on an afternoon when Butler employed a niche defensive scheme for the sole purpose of exploiting the Red Storm’s most glaring weakness, with Matta sporadically applying the 1-3-1 zone throughout the game, Pitino’s menagerie of maulers could not be stopped — such is the oiliness of this St. John’s machine as the NCAA Tournament approaches. The Red Storm made enough 3-pointers (7-for-20) to keep pace with the Bulldogs’ wider selection of shooters, nullifying one of Butler’s only potential advantages. And in the stretches when deep jumpers weren’t falling, St. John’s barreled toward the rim instead with 44 points in the paint and a 15-0 edge in fast-break points. Pitino’s team never trailed in an eventual 78-57 win, advancing to the semifinals to face No. 5-seeded Marquette.

“I think it’s pick your poison,” said Luis, who scored a game-high 20 points and grabbed seven rebounds. “You either let us play in man, beat you off the bounce. Or if you’re playing zone, you’re going to give up a lot of offensive rebounds, and that’s what we do well.

“Every time we step on that floor as a team, as a unit, we want to come out and be the best team. We want to be deserving of that No. 1 seed and just continue to play hard together and not take any games for granted, you know? Coach Pitino told us that [we should] play this game like it was our last, and I think that’s what we did.”

In appreciation of St. John’s earning that No. 1 seed, an overwhelmingly pro-Red Storm crowd nearly filled Madison Square Garden to the rafters at lunchtime on a workday — the kind of sentence that would have seemed downright silly before Pitino’s arrival prior to the 2023-24 campaign.

It’s Pitino who’s injected this fan base and city with basketball delight amid a season that’s seen St. John’s climb to No. 6 in the national rankings. He’s the reason why a middle-aged bald man sporting an elaborately embroidered Red Storm letterman jacket had the words BIG EAST painted directly onto his scalp, flanked by the jersey numbers of this year’s stars. And he’s the reason why this building reached a fever pitch when one of the greatest players in program history, Walter Berry, was honored at midcourt. Without Pitino’s revitalization of a Big East bottom feeder, there wouldn’t have been enough people in the arena to greet a legend of yesteryear so warmly. When Luis accepted the league’s Player of the Year award on Wednesday afternoon, he joked that Berry was “nice enough to give it to me” after safeguarding the honor for 40 years, such was the Red Storm’s wait for another bonafide star.

“We’re not finished yet,” Luis said during his acceptance speech.

And nothing about Thursday’s win over Butler suggested that St. John’s will be stopped any time soon. Not when Richmond is nearing triple-doubles with 15 points, nine assists and eight rebounds to finish plus-27 in 29 minutes of playing time. Not when Luis is careening toward the rim to snag more offensive rebounds (three) than anyone outside of Zuby Ejiofor, the starting center. Not when the Red Storm bench is chipping in 20 points on 9-for-19 shooting and snagging 14 rebounds, including four on the offensive end that contributed to the team’s 20 second-chance points. Not when power forward Aaron Scott is burying back-to-back 3-pointers and pushing the St. John’s lead to 23 with a little more than three minutes remaining.

It was around that time when what remained of The Garden crowd climbed to its feet in raucous applause. “Let’s go Johnnies!” they chanted. Nearly everything about this quarterfinal had gone right.

“Basically, I told the guys that a five-star performance is a Michael Jordan performance,” Pitino said to begin his postgame news conference, “and we were a four-star tonight.”

Michael Cohen covers college football and college basketball for FOX Sports. Follow him on Twitter @Michael_Cohen13.

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