The doors to Carnesecca Arena opened at 5 o’clock, and in marched March Madness.
A Red Storm of March Madness. Basketball utopia along Utopia Parkway.
Dance Fever.
Rick Pitino and Zuby Ejiofor and a Big East championship St. John’s Red Storm team with Sweet 16 dreams … and even beyond.
Because no dream is too big when Rick Pitino is coaching your team.
Pitino has a bigger team, a more athletic team than last year’s Johnnies.
So go ahead and dream big, St. John’s.
Dream Sweet 16, at the very least.
Your Hall of Fame coach has been to the Sweet 16 a remarkable 13 times.
Survive and advance begins Friday in San Diego for No. 5 seed St. John’s against No. 12 seed Northern Iowa in the East Region.
California Dreamin’.
“Half the staff thought we were a 4, and I thought we were 5,” Pitino said inside the Taffner Field House.
This won’t be easy. If the Red Storm beat 23-12 Northern Iowa, a second-round matchup against Kansas and superstar Darryn Peterson looms, if the Jayhawks dispatch Cal Baptist.
That’s enough to worry about before even thinking about No. 1 seed Duke and No. 2 UConn, which gets to begin its journey in Philadelphia.
“The first opponent that we’re playing is very tough … they have a senior-laden team, they have four guys in double figures, they shoot very high percentage from 3, they don’t turn it over a whole lot, they average 15 assists per game … so I don’t know a whole lot about ’em,” Pitino said.
He knows a whole lot about Bill Self’s Kansas.
“If you get to the second round, you’ll have a packed house, but it will be all Kansas fans, they will pack the place,” Pitino said. “We’ll have maybe a few hundred people, that’s about it … it’s not ideal traveling to the West Coast, but you deal with it and you just make the best of it.”
Ejiofor, Big East Player of the Year, transferred two years ago from Kansas.
“Look, it’s San Diego, it’s not Alaska,” Pitino said, and chuckled. “It’s a pretty good city.”
Pitino and Ejiofor sat side by side flanked by the rest of the players and coaches in the center of the Carnesecca Arena floor looking up at the big-screen TV in front of them. The suspense ended quickly when St. John’s learned its fate on the CBS Selection Sunday draw.
“We’ll go play in the park, we don’t care,” Dillon Mitchell said, and everyone cheered.
Pitino, microphone in hand, stood and spoke to the faithful.
“We’re gonna represent you in a great way, I guarantee you,” Pitino said, and everyone cheered.
A roar went up when Pitino revealed that athletic director Ed Kull had nominated Ejiofor to be inducted into a Ring of Honor. And “Zuuuuuuu.”
Arkansas in the second round a year ago in Providence reminds you that there are never any guarantees in March, but hope springs eternal at St. John’s knowing that Pitino has taken teams at Providence, at Kentucky, at Louisville, to the Final Four, and is driven again to take the school of his native New Yawk back to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 1999 under Mike Jarvis.
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The portal hasn’t stopped the elite coaches from recruiting the elite players, but Pitino’s genius has forever been building a team that is more dangerous in March than it is in November and December. A team that is peaking at the right time.
This team has won 19 of its past 20 games and steamrolled UConn in the conference tournament championship.
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“The players that come into your program understand the head coach, understand the culture,” Pitino said, “and if they want to enter this program, it’s more than money. … So you’re getting players that buy into that culture.”
Of course, the Johnnies won’t have the Garden at their back now. But the portal, for all its warts, can get a coach more key battle-tested players with March Madness experience. Ejiofor and Ruben Prey and Sadiku Ibine Ayo experienced last year’s sudden death heartbreak with Pitino. Mitchell was on the 2022-23 Texas team that advanced to the Elite Eight. Ian Jackson played on last year’s North Carolina team that beat San Diego State in the First Four round before losing to Ole Miss.
“If you’re playing good basketball defensively, your confidence is there,” Pitino said. “We’re a very confident basketball team right now.”
The night before the Arkansas game last year, Pitino told his Johnnies: “If we beat them, we will win the national championship.”
The endings in March are so cruel. But here comes another beginning.
