Oziyah Sellers is getting accustomed to the voice of St. John’s coach Rick Pitino constantly encouraging him to shoot from 3-point range.
Sellers is listening and showing the promise Pitino has been anticipating for the No. 14 Red Storm (4-2), who head into Wednesday’s matchup against No. 21 Auburn (5-2) in a consolation game at the Players Era men’s tournament in Las Vegas.
The Stanford transfer has made a career-best five 3-pointers in each of the first two games of the tournament, knocking down 10 of 13 attempts and averaging 21 points during the span.
“Even in moments when I felt like I wasn’t really open, he wanted me to take it,” Sellers said after Tuesday’s 96-81 victory over Baylor. “Having that confidence from him makes me want to go out there and play free. So when I get the opportunity, I will definitely take it.”
Sellers made a career-best 59 3-pointers for the Cardinal last season.
The senior guard had 22 points against the Bears, one day after scoring 20 in an 83-82 loss to No. 15 Iowa State.
Providence transfer Bryce Hopkins had 26 points for St. John’s vs. Baylor on 9-of-12 shooting from the field and made all three of his 3-point attempts. Naturally, that pleased Pitino, too.
“I haven’t begged very often about players shooting the ball, but I begged these two guys to take more shots, and they did (Tuesday night),” Pitino said of Sellers and Hopkins. “They were both brilliant.”
Pitino liked how his team rebounded from the close loss to the Cyclones.
“It was a good bounce-back game,” he said. “I think this team has the potential to be a good team as we grow, but they’re new to each other. We see a lot of mistakes by being new to each other.”
Auburn will have some bouncing back to do after being shellacked 102-72 by No. 7 Michigan on Tuesday. The win put the Wolverines in the title game against No. 12 Gonzaga on Wednesday night.
Auburn beat Oregon 84-73 on Monday, but it was a tough contest from the outset one day later. Auburn shot 35.5% from the field, was outrebounded 51-35 and outscored 29-3 on fast-break points.
“Sometimes you’re going to run into a buzz saw,” Auburn coach Steven Pearl said. “And we’ve always talked about with our group, like, we just can’t get too high, we can’t get too low. We can’t get too high because we beat a good Oregon team. And we can’t get too low because a really good Michigan team ran us off the floor.
“It’s about how we respond from here. That’s the biggest thing with our guys. We’re always talking about finding ways to improve, to grow, to get better as a unit.”
Tahaad Pettiford made four 3-pointers and scored 16 points for Auburn. He is averaging 20 points in the two games in Las Vegas.
Keyshawn Hall had a season-low 15 points against Michigan. He scored 20 or more points in each of the Tigers’ first four games and had 18 against Oregon.
Auburn’s KeShawn Murphy promised there would be no carryover into the game against St. John’s.
“We know what happened,” Murphy said. “We knew what went wrong early. And (Pearl) talks about it a lot. This doesn’t define anything. We just come in and move forward. We’ll wash this off our shoulders and get better.”
–Field Level Media
