A furious late-season surge wasn’t enough to get St. John’s back in the NCAA Tournament.
The Red Storm fell short of a March Madness bid for the fifth year in a row — and weren’t even among the Selection Committee’s first four teams out.
Instead, the committee made Florida Atlantic a No. 8 seed, Texas A&M and Michigan No. 9 seeds, and put Boise State and Colorado in one play-in game and Virginia and Colorado State in another, as revealed in Sunday’s bracket announcement.
In its first season under Hall of Fame coach Rick Pitino, St. John’s won six consecutive games before Friday’s 95-90 loss to No. 2 Uconn in the Big East Tournament semifinal. That wasn’t enough, however, to overcome a pedestrian 14-12 start to the season or a string of bad breaks as so-called bid-stealers won their conference tournaments over the weekend.
The Red Storm entered Selection Sunday with a 20-13 record, including an 11-9 mark against the formidable Big East, but managed only one win against a ranked opponent, which came last month against then-No. 15 Creighton.
The NCAA’s NET Rankings, which value wins and losses using metrics including opponent win percentage and game location, rated St. John’s as the No. 32 team, while the analytics site KenPom had the Red Storm at No. 25.
The Johnnies’ tournament hopes were on life support a month ago after they blew a 19-point lead to Seton Hall, marking their eighth loss in 10 games. Afterward, Pitino bemoaned his team’s lack of athleticism and toughness in comments that drew national scrutiny.
St. John’s then won its next six games, including a 91-72 victory over Seton Hall in Thursday’s Big East Tournament quarterfinal. Pitino’s team seemed to have a case for the NCAA Tournament even with Friday’s loss to powerhouse UConn, but its prospects grew grimmer as other conference tournaments unfolded.
NC State won the ACC Tournament, Oregon won the Pac-12 Tournament, UAB won the AAC Tournament and New Mexico won the Mountain West Conference Tournament, granting automatic bids to four teams that were otherwise not expected to make the Big Dance. Those berths took away at-large bids from teams on the bubble.
New Mexico is coached by Pitino’s son Richard Pitino.
Of the 68 spots in the NCAA Tournament, 32 go to the Division 1 conference tournament winners.
Only three Big East teams — the top overall seed UConn, No. 2 seed Marquette and No. 3 seed Creighton – made the tournament. Seton Hall, which went 13-7 in Big East play, was among the first four out.
A berth would have made Pitino the first coach to lead six teams to the NCAA Tournament. He won national championships with Kentucky (1996) and Louisville (2013), though the latter was vacated due to a sex scandal involving recruits.
St. John’s hired Pitino last offseason to turn around a once-proud program with only three NCAA Tournament appearances since 2002 and none since 2019. The Red Storm last won a game in March Madness in 2000.
