OH MY WORD!! DID YOU GUYS KNOW COACH PITINO’S DAD IS ALSO A COACH!?!?!?! With that out of the way other than the hundred times you will hear it during the game, here goes. St. John’s stumbled a bit out of the gate in the Big East, only beating Georgetown by 12 before losing to […]
OH MY WORD!! DID YOU GUYS KNOW COACH PITINO’S DAD IS ALSO A COACH!?!?!?!
With that out of the way other than the hundred times you will hear it during the game, here goes. St. John’s stumbled a bit out of the gate in the Big East, only beating Georgetown by 12 before losing to Providence. Then, they hit stride. Butler, Creighton, Marquette, Villanova, and Seton Hall have all been summarily dispatched. In that span St. John’s is 12th in the nation in adjusted efficiency and looks every bit the Final Four challenger they were touted to be at the start of the season.
St. John’s also popped up in the point shaving scandal, though not as participants. DePaul threw a game against them in which some of the players were texting with fixers during the game. One assumes that with the morally reprehensible Tony Stubblefield out of the way, there was no fixing involved in the beating that the Blue Demons took this season.
Team Fingerprint
Right now the Red Storm are just doing everything well. In the last five games they are top 60 in functionally everything that matters. They had struggled in defensive rebounding earlier in the season, but in the last few weeks they are 57th nationally. Shooting is really their only struggle, they aren’t very good either inside or outside of the arc for the season. They’ve been better in their hot stretch, but not significantly. They make up for that by attacking the glass relentlessly and getting to the line better than all but 31 other teams in the nation.
Defensively they turn teams over and do it by pressuring the ball for steals. They block shots. They force non-steal turnovers. They are 44th in the nation in interior defense. Beyond the arc they are susceptible and give up a lot of attempts. If there is a way to beat this team, it is by getting red hot from behind the arc and not falling prey to their pressure. Of SJU’s five losses, four have come to teams that kept the turnover rate under 20%.
Players
| Starting matchups | ||
|---|---|---|
| Ian Jackson | Point Guard | All Wright |
| Sophomore | Class | Sophomore |
| 6’5″, 195 | Measurements | 6’3″, 190 |
| 10.5/2.3/1.2 | Game line | 7.5/1.8/2.2 |
| 43.7/34.9/91.7 | Shooting line | 45.5/45.6/83.3 |
| Jackson transferred in from UNC for the chance to post the same ORtg in slightly fewer minutes at St. John’s. I guess that’s the price guys are willing to pay to get into the best basketball conference in the nation. He’s a career 38% shooter on big volume from deep and he posts good defensive stats. He’s not much of a distributor, but nobody on the roster is and someone has to go here on the grid, so I’ll defer to KenPom’s position algorithm to slot him here. | ||
| Oziyah Sellers | Shooting Guard | Malik Messina-Moore |
| Senior | Class | Senior |
| 6’5″, 190 | Measurements | 6’5″, 200 |
| 11.3/3.1/2.2 | Game line | 10.8/2.8/4 |
| 44.6/40/86.5 | Shooting line | 38.4/33.3/76.8 |
| Sellers also transferred in from the Atlantic Coast Conference, having played at Stanford last season. I know. He’s on the roster to be an excellent shooter and that’s what he is. He doesn’t contribute many ancillary skills, he doesn’t waste possessions and he has hit 4+ three-pointers in 5 different games this year. | ||
| Bryce Hopkins | Small Forward | Tre Carroll |
| Senior | Class | Senior |
| 6’7″, 225 | Measurements | 6’8″, 235 |
| 13.6/5.3/2.5 | Game line | 17.3/5.7/2.8 |
| 46/29.2/75.8 | Shooting line | 50.4/32.9/63.1 |
| Hopkins has taken a step back from the player he was 3 years ago when he was named First Team All-Big East, but remains a very solid contributor. He’s getting 12 points per game on 40% shooting from the floor in conference play, but he cleans up on the glass, blocks shots, and gets to the line, where he shoots well, a lot. He put up 26 in 26 minutes earlier this season against Baylor, but Baylor didn’t even have any NBA Draftees on the roster at the time, so does it really count? | ||
| Dillon Mitchell | Power Forward | Filip Borovicanin |
| Senior | Class | Senior |
| 6’8″, 210 | Measurements | 6’9″, 227 |
| 9.1/6.7/2.4 | Game line | 10.1/7.9/4.6 |
| 59.3/0/58.2 | Shooting line | 46.4/34.9/82.4 |
| Mitchell’s insertion into the starting lineup has coincided with, or perhaps been the cause of, St. John’s 5 game winning streak. He’s not scoring a ton or doing so that efficiently, but when a shot misses, statistically he’s the most likely player in the conference to come up with the ball, ranking in the top 7 of both offensive and defensive reboudning rate. He hasn’t been blocking shots like he normally does and is still someone opponents are comfortable putting on the line, but he makes the prospect of winning the second chance battle against the Johnnies way more difficult. | ||
| Zuby Ejiofor | Center | Jovan Milicevic |
| Senior | Class | Sophomore |
| 6’9″, 245 | Measurements | 6’10”, 241 |
| 15.8/7.3/3.2 | Game line | 11.3/4.1/1.4 |
| 53.4/30/69.8 | Shooting line | 43.4/42.9/66.7 |
| Ejifor was First Team All-Conference last season and is pacing to repeat the trick this time around. In conference play, he’s second in scoring, fifth in blocks, eighth in rebounds and assists, and has in EFG of 58.4%. His main weakness is his his sub-70% free throw shooting, but he is frawing 8 fouls per 40 minutes so his volume offsets his inefficiency there. |
Reserves
St. John’s bench has gotten slightly deeper as the season has gone on, but is headlined by a trio of main contributors. 6’5” wing Joson Sanon started 11 games but is turning the ball over twice as often as he assists his teammates on the season and, although he shoots the ball well from three, is shooting a disastrous 33% inside the arc. He did score 12 points against Kentucky without making a field goal, which is something. Dylan Darling is the team’s best distributor and is leading the Big East in three point shooting percentage. Somehow he is making threes at a higher rate than free throws, but he will likely spend more time on the ball than Jackson does. 6’11” Portuguese big man Reuben Prey will soak up some minutes in the front court, during which St. John’s typically loses something on the rebounding front. Prey is a potent scorer when he’s on the court and blocks a lot of shots, but his opportunities are few and far between given the talent ahead of him. Lefteris Liotopoulos is a guard who has pushed himself further into the rotation since Big East play began, sort of. He started 2026 with a solid outing against Providence before putting double digits for the first time in a conference game against Butler and a 17 point explosion at Creighton. He has played 11 minutes in the three games since then and is 0-2 from the floor with 2 turnovers and a foul.
Three Questions
– Will the refs for this game be any good? It’s a weird question to ask, but as we all saw on Wednesday, it matters. It will take some serious effort for this game to be close at the end, everyone in the building will be hoping it’s not John Gaffney or Brian O’Connell with a chance to get himself on TV with a big call.
– Can Xavier defensive rebound? The Musketeers are 42nd in the nation in defensive rebounding, but they periodically have games where they simply can’t. In five of Xavier’s eight losses the opponent has grabbed 29% or more of their misses. Xavier has dominated Creighton, Providence, and West Virginia on the glass. They’ve also allowed Marquette and UConn to do as they please.
– Is Jovan Milicevic capable of giving good minutes? There were many legitimate complaints about the officiating on Wednesday, but Milicevic can’t have had any. He somehow went over the back 27 feet from the basket, then got called for a reach even farther out. Maybe some of the other fouls were on shot contests that are sometimes not called, but the guy just has to start being more intelligent on the floor. He has been excellent the last three games, but he hasn’t made 30 minutes in any of them.
Three Keys
– Push the pace: SJU also likes to play fast, but no one likes playing Xavier fast when everyone is out and running. Most importantly, Xavier’s bigs can run Hopkins and Ejiofor. Getting Milicevic, Carroll, and Filip Borovicanin out and moving will be a serious advantage. To do that, though people have to…
– Stay out of foul trouble: The last time that Xavier didn’t face serious foul trouble was in getting obliterated by UConn. Since then, they have flirted with disaster every game and had people foul out in four of five. In that other game they had two guys with four fouls. To win this one, they need to have everyone available.
– Maybe try to get to the line: Foul disparity has been a big discussion on Twitter. That’s a terrible way to judge referees and it doesn’t allow for the fact that Xavier is 344th nationally in free throw rate. This team is committed to the jumpshot, and that means they don’t get to the line hardly at all. In fact, over the last five games they are dead last nationally in free throw rate. The fact they are shooting them better barely matters.
Category: General Sports
