Rick Pitino got exactly what he wanted out of his team in the final tune-up game before St. John’s opens its season against Fordham in just over a week.
After getting caught in an offensive slugfest against Rutgers in the Johnnies’ first exhibition game of the year, Pitino’s squad held the Towson Tigers to 46 points in a 64-46 victory at Carnesecca Arena on Saturday.
While the final score seemed somewhat inconsequential to Pitino, who’s entering his second year at the helm for St. John’s, the legendary coach has been prioritizing defense heading into the 2024-25 season.
The Red Storm struggled out of the gate last year on the defensive end of the ball, and it’s been a focus of Pitino’s this year to keep it from happening again.
The purpose for Pitino, in scheduling a team like Towson, was to address that very issue.
“We played really great defense and that’s what we wanted to get out of this game,” Pitino said. “We’ve been working about 75 percent of our practices just with man defense. One of the reasons we were ready last year at the beginning of the year is we weren’t very good defensively. We learned a valuable lesson and came away with a valuable defensive performance.”
St. John’s stifled Towson offensively for a better part of the game, holding the Tigers to 28.8 percent shooting from the floor through the 40-minute affair and putting up 26 points off turnovers alone.
The Red Storm blocked eight shots and stole the ball 13 times in the win, while holding them to 21.7 percent shooting from beyond the 3-point line.
“We locked in on defense and got the stops needed,” said Aaron Scott, who finished with a team-high 11 points.
Pitino compared the lessons from Saturday afternoon’s game in Queens to a game he coached during the Final Four in 2013, when Louisville faced Wichita State for a trip to the national title game.
The current St. John’s coach described how Louisville had to be the better team defensively in order to advance, similar to how things played out against Towson.
“Towson is a very well-coached team, very good defensively, very physical and we got a lot out of playing against them. It was really, really good for us today,” he said.
Saturday also marked another chance for players like Vincent Iwuchukwu, Jaiden Glover, Lefteris Liotopoulos and Ruben Prey to show what they can do on the court for St. John’s.
In part, it was an opportunity to see who can fit into the rotation for the season opener against Fordham.
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“I didn’t care about playing the starters too much because I know what they can do,” Pitino said.
Prey ended up seeing more than 16 minutes against Towson, and the Red Storm scored 33 points courtesy of their bench.
“We got a lot of depth. As you can see we subbed five [players] in, five [players] out and we still played,” Scott said. “Still kept the intensity up with the subs. We had a lot of depth, but for the freshmen, it’s their first year they got to get used to the game speed and everything. Today was really a good showing for them to build trust with coach so that they can play.”
While everyone seemed to come away from Saturday’s win with a good feeling, there was one area that Pitino still wanted to see improvement from.
“We just didn’t block out well, and that was the only negative from a defensive standpoint,” the St. John’s coach said.
With the two exhibition games out of the way, things get real for the Johnnies, who are once again facing high expectations heading into the second year under Pitino.
St. John’s was picked to finish fifth in the Big East, while Kadary Richmond and Deivon Smith were named preseason All-Big East First Team and Second Teams, respectively.
