You know what the first sign is that you’ve had a pretty good day in March?
This is:
It was 10 solid minutes into the postgame press conference when the subject of the NCAA Tournament was broached to Rick Pitino, RJ Luis and Joel Soriano, the three men tasked with speaking on behalf of St. John’s after the Johnnies routed Seton Hall, 91-72, in the quarterfinals of the Big East Tournament.
These are the days, four-game days, when the Power-6 tournaments are littered with testimony and pleading, coaches insisting their team is a Tournament team, players vowing that if they can just get in, they can do serious damage. The thing those coaches and players have in common is they have nothing else to think about. They’ve lost, and so they throw themselves at once at the mercy of the selection committee.
The Johnnies still have their eyes on an immediate prize.
“We’re trying,” Pitino said, “to win the Big East Tournament.”
Maybe those stump speeches will come out Friday night, after the semifinals, after St. John’s has taken on second-ranked Connecticut, which is on such a roll that it spotted Xavier a 10-0 lead in its game Thursday and still won by 27. Or maybe they won’t be necessary at all, if this late-season surge has real legs to it.
“We were locked in,” said Soriano, whose 14-point, 12-rebound, four-assist gem was among his best career games at an absolutely essential moment. “Now we’re playing Friday night at Madison Square Garden.”
It seems a simple concept and yet it has been 24 years since the Johnnies have made it as far as Friday night at the Garden, which means semifinals of the Big East. Of all the examples of the wildernesses this program has found itself wandering in these past few decades, that one is the most remarkable because the Garden is their de facto home.
Twenty-four years ago they not only played on Friday but stuck around till Saturday, too, beating UConn for their most recent conference championship. Those Huskies were defending national champions, too.
“Lucky draw,” Pitino said of Friday’s challenge, laughing. “Easy game.”
Twenty-five days earlier, Seton Hall had erased a huge St. John’s lead on Long Island and beaten the Johnnies a second time, and that’s the day Pitino blew a gasket and essentially called out all of his players as being slightly less skilled than Ollie from Hickory High, and lacking Ollie’s clutch gene. It was around that time that the coach sensed some of the suits at St. John’s had prepared themselves that the season’s goals had all been reached.
Pitino offered his players an alternate scenario.
“Seven games,” he said. “You have to play seven elimination games.”
Seton Hall Thursday afternoon was No. 6, and it was an up-tempo gem, a game pulsing with pace, the defense collecting deflections and the offense getting after it on the break.
You can never speak definitively about these things unless you’re ordering pizza with the rest of the crew in the selection committee and sitting inside the same room. But it sure feels like unless about 15 different weird things happen between now and Sunday, this win locked up one of the 68 slots in the draw. Elimination game No. 7 may actually be a house-money game.
Since Seton Hall was a consensus “in” and St. John’s a near-consensus “last four in” team before the game, it would make sense if they swapped seed lines Thursday, and that would mean the Johnnies might even be able to avoid Dayton for the play-in games.
The partisan parts of the sellout crowd certainly thought so. As the final minutes wound down, they chanted “Let’s go, Johnnies!” They chanted, “We are … ST. JOHN’S!” And at the last they tried to muster an “N-C-A-A!” chant, too.
“So surreal, playing here today,” said Luis, who had 18 points and nine boards off the bench and seems to get better and better by the half, not just by the game.
Said Soriano: “This tournament is amazing, It gives you a different kind of feeling, all the greats who’ve played here all the games he’s [pointing at Pitino] coached here.”
Friday they get a crack at the king, and if they could ever pull it off it’ll turn this tournament and the basketball city upside down. If they don’t? Then they can start listing their credentials, and it ought to be OK. They’ve had to be perfect for 25 days. And were perfect for 25 days. Now they go for the icing.
