Coach Rick Pitino and No. 15 St. John’s will wrap up their season series with struggling Georgetown on Tuesday evening at Washington, D.C., in a game that will feature teams going in opposite directions.
The Red Storm (17-3, 8-1 Big East) have won six straight games and are tied with No. 9 Marquette atop the conference standings in large part due to a strong defense and timely offense by Kadary Richmond and RJ Luis.
The recent success helped them move up five spots in the this week’s Associated Press Top 25 poll.
Pitino, a Hall of Fame coach, has St John’s off to its best start in 39 years and he is on track to take his sixth different school to the NCAA Tournament after missing out in his first season with the Red Storm.
St. John’s has its best ranking in a decade, back to when Steve Lavin guided the Red Storm to the No. 15 spot during his final season in the 2014-15 campaign.
Of course, it hasn’t all been a smooth ride as of late for St. John’s.
Twice in the last three games, the Red Storm have had to fight back from double-digit deficits to continue winning.
In the first meeting with Georgetown on Jan. 14, St. John’s trailed 35-20 with over two minutes left in the first half before earning a 63-58 victory. St. John’s held the Hoyas to 21 points on 32 percent shooting from the field after the break.
And in their most recent game, against Xavier on Wednesday, the Red Storm trailed 50-34 with 17:02 remaining before forcing overtime and coming away with a 79-71 win behind Richmond’s 19 points and Luis’ 16 even though St. John’s finished just 1 of 12 from long distance.
“A lot of teams, when they get down 16, get down 14, really hang their heads,” Pitino said after the win. “It’s just the opposite with these guys, and that goes back to their fear of losing, and they just dig in and dig in and played magnificent when the game was on the line and we had to dig in. We made every great defensive play, which we didn’t do in the first, first 28 minutes.”
After starting 3-0 in conference play for the first time since 2012, Georgetown (13-7, 4-5) has lost five of six games and has and fallen into the middle of the league standings along with three other teams sitting on five losses.
With an improved defense in Ed Cooley’s second season with the Hoyas, offense generally has been the issue of late.
Georgetown has been held to under 70 points in seven straight games, going 2-5. The Hoyas have topped that mark just once this season in Big East play — an 81-57 win over Creighton on Dec. 18.
Some of that can be attributed to injuries to Thomas Sorber, who is averaging a team-high 14.8 points per game, and Jayden Epps (12.9).
Both players were back in the starting lineup in a 78-68 loss at Providence on Saturday. Sorber had 25 points and 15 rebounds while Epps finished with six points.
For the first time, Cooley said he thinks defense was his team’s undoing. Georgetown was outrebounded 21-18 on the defensive end and 37-32 overall.
“This was the first game we played all year where I thought our defense let us down,” Cooley said. “I don’t think we were gritty, and I thought that Providence was tougher.”
–Field Level Media
