St. John’s coach Rick Pitino did not like the shots that Uconn was made early, did not like the shots that his generally incredible defense allowed at the beginning, did not like his team ends up taking up to 14 points on Friday the first half of the night.
So he started pressing.
And then Uconn started to turn the ball over and never really stopped. As the final buzzer had sounded, the Huskies had given the ball 15 times more than the red storm, which limited UCONN to 14 attempts at the field less. And, as coach Dan Hurley more or less recognized it later, if you take 14 shots less than a team as good defensive as St. John’s was this season, then lose the battle of points From the points by 18, you are not winning this match.
Final score: St. John’s 68, Uconn 62.
After late 24-10, the RED Storm was ahead of Uconn 58-38 the rest of the way to extend its sequence of victories at 10 games while improving at 21-3 in total, 12-1 in the Big East .
“What the press has done for me, for 40 years, has worn people, in terms of legs, where they do not shoot the ball,” said Pitino thereafter. “This is always the gift that my teams have had. If we can exhaust their legs, they will not pull as well. But they came to us, and they got too many easy photos. Press would remove a little starch from their shots, would take a little time in the rear area (and) would make us ultra-aggressive.
“We supported more tonight than we have normally,” added Pitino. “But it is because of what they did offensively at the beginning.”
This decision reversed the game.
Uconn scored 26 points in the first 7:22 and only 36 points in the last 32:38. As a result, St. John’s now has the country’s second best defense, according to Barttorvik.com. And this defense is in fact n ° 1, by a significant margin, during the sequence of current victories of Red Storm in 10 games.
What. A. History.
As I said in the Wednesday episode of the basketball podcast Eye on CollyWhat is happening in St. John’s right now, in the 2nd year under Pitino, has become my favorite story of this season. The temple of renown of Naismith Memorial, 72 years old – and twice a national champion who has been insane powerful conference basketball for six years – has picked up a historically large brand which was mostly bad during a big from the last three decades and having transformed it into a competitor of the Final Four less than two years after accepting the work, which means that Pitino becoming the first person to have led four different schools in the Final Four is very at stake. Said, this man who was dismissed in Louisville and reduced to the mid-majeur basketball training built a team during his second year in St. John’s Better that the teams currently in Kentucky and Louisville, two places where he previously built national championship teams. .
It’s really incredible.
St. John’s is up to n ° 8 in the basketball rankings CBS Sports 25 and 1 on Saturday morning, which caused Marquette, Iowa State, Texas A&M, Memphis, Michigan State, Ole Miss, Missouri, Kansas And Texas Tech to everyone to be pushed into a place each, no fault on their part. The red storm should now win the Big East by two games, according to Kenpom.com. This is another testimony of Pitino’s brilliance since the program has not even won a share of a Big East title since 1992.
