NEW YORK — To cut the final string of net off the rim after St. John’s won its second straight Big East tournament championship, the 73-year-old Hall of Fame coach and the 21-year-old conference player of the year climbed the ladder together.
Rick Pitino had his arm around Zuby Ejiofor as the Red Storm star clipped the last strand, spun the twine over his head and accepted one last ovation from adoring fans at Madison Square Garden.
“It was just bittersweet,” Ejiofor said about getting emotional after his final game at the Garden.
Probably more sweet than bitter, though.
Led by Ejiofor, No. 13 St. John’s repeated as Big East tournament champions with a 72-52 win over No. 6 UConn on Saturday night, a loss that might have cost the Huskies a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
A few hours after Florida lost to Vanderbilt in the SEC tournament semifinals to further open the door to a top seed in the NCAA Tournament, Dan Hurley’s Huskies got jumped early by the Johnnies and never fully recovered.
Ejiofor was a force on both ends for top-seeded St. John’s (28-6). The Big East player of the year had 18 points, nine rebounds and seven blocks. Ejiofor denied UConn big man Tarris Reed Jr. at the rim with 4:45 left in the second half and gave a Dikembe Mutombo “No, no, no” finger wag to punctuate the play. Moments later, Ejiofor drained a 3 to make it 72-49, and “M-V-P!” chants rained down at the World’s Most Famous Arena.
Ejiofor added a conference tournament most outstanding player award to his trophy case.
“We know what Zuby brings to the table and we just play off of that,” said Bryce Hopkins, who had 18 points on 7-of-9 shooting.
“He’s among the handful of best players I’ve ever coached against in college,” Hurley said. “I mean, that guy is a true difference maker that elevates everyone around him.”
St. John’s won the Big East tournament for the fifth time in school history and for the first time in consecutive seasons. The Red Storm also joined UConn in 1998 and ’99 as the only Big East teams to win both the regular-season and tournament titles in consecutive seasons — though those Huskies shared the regular-season championship because the league was divided into divisions then.
Pitino took over St. John’s three seasons ago, promising a return to the glory days of the mid-1980s for the program, and he has exceeded expectations.
“There’s so much history with St John’s, and we brought it all back in three years,” Pitino said.
“And for me personally, being a New Yorker and seeing the thrills of our fans and seeing the thrills of the team means a great deal to me to be a small part of this whole thing. “I’m really, really proud. I know Louie (Carnesecca) is looking down on us with great pride. Joe Lapchick’s looking down on us with great pride.”
Mark Jackson and Walter Berry, who played for Carnesecca in the 1980s, were among the former St. John’s greats in attendance at the sold-out Garden. Pitino drafted Jackson when he was coaching the Knicks.
“I watch Coach Pitino. He makes me want to still suit up,” Jackson said.
Jackson recalled a conversation he had with Carnesecca, who died at the age of 99 about a year and a half after Pitino was hired.
“I can remember specifically one conversation where in the middle of it, he said, ‘Jax, son of a gun’s a genius.’ He was putting his stamp on Coach Pitino even though he didn’t have to, because he knew I was already part of that congregation,” Jackson said.
St. John’s is the first Big East team to win back-to-back tournament titles since Villanova won three in a row from 2017 to ‘19. Pitino is the first Big East coach to win consecutive tournament titles with two Big East schools. He also did it with Louisville.
“A lot of the things I talk about have been like, how do we make this a sustainable model?” athletic director Ed Kull said. “And between the amount of money we’re spending on student-athletes and rev share and trying to fundraise and generate or sell tickets or sell sponsorships or now patches and naming rights, you’re like, all right, what are we really doing here, and is it sustainable? So it gives me a lot of hope.”
“It’s more than sustainable,” billionaire entrepreneur and St. John’s alum Mike Repole added.
St. John’s scored the first 10 points Saturday night, while UConn was a mess, nearly committing a shot-clock violation on one possession, getting called for a five-second violation trying to inbound on another and having an offensive foul whistled on Reed on yet another. UConn finally got on the board when Solo Ball converted a traditional 3-point play at the 15:55 mark.
A few minutes later, Hurley was hit with a technical foul after he stomped on the sideline in protest of a non-call on a putback by Silas Demary Jr. That got the St. John’s fans fired up, and Dillon Mitchell’s fast-break dunk to put the Johnnies up 23-9 had them in a frenzy less than a minute later.
“I don’t know what was better: the defense, the offense or the attitude,” Pitino said.
As for the Huskies, they own some of the best nonconference wins in the country against Michigan State, Kansas, BYU, Illinois and, most notably, the aforementioned Gators. But the Big East hasn’t provided UConn a ton of help in building that resume, outside of St. John’s, which had a lackluster nonconference showing before hitting its stride in league play.
Villanova is the only other NCAA Tournament team expected out of the conference.
Hurley didn’t lobby for a No. 1 seed after the game, and he also made no apologies for where UConn is heading into March Madness.
“We’ll do what we did in 2023. We’ll leave it here,” Hurley said. “Yeah, we know that we play our best basketball versus in the NCAA Tournament and versus nonconference teams. This is a really, really physical league. That was a really, really, really physical game, and we’re excited to play in the NCAA Tournament that doesn’t get played like that.”
The St. John’s-UConn rivalry is great theater, with Hurley on one side and the Hall of Famer Pitino on the other. They have combined for four national titles. But the Red Storm and Huskies left the rest of the Big East in the dust this season.
“So we need the league to get back,” Pitino said. “We’ve got great coaches. I think the misconception is, well, the Big East has got $22 million (in revenue sharing) to spend because they have no football. We’re not spending $22 million. But we all need to, everybody needs to get $10 million to spend. For the rich people like Georgetown and Villanova maybe they go to 12. For those people that are poor, trying to get a break in life, like us, we maybe get to 10. But everybody needs to get that up there so we can get greatness back. That’s what it’s all about right now. It’s a salary cap. Everybody needs to get to $10-12 million, and with this coaching in this league, everybody will be back and the Big East will be great once again.”
Only St. John’s was great on this night.
The Johnnies had the lead up to 18 early in the second half. UConn, looking for its record ninth Big East tournament title, had one punch left. A 13-2 run, with Reed scoring six straight inside, had the lead down to seven with 12:42 remaining and MSG vibrating with chants of “U-C-O-N-N. UConn! UConn! UConn!”
Ejiofor and the Red Storm coolly tamed the Huskies and their fans. The Big East defensive player of the year blocked Demary Jr., and Mitchell broke free after a steal for a roundhouse dunk on the other end that nudged the lead to 58-45. Demary walked off and did not return with what Hurley called a mild left ankle sprain.
The Red Storm won the first meeting at a sold-out Garden on Feb. 6, and the Huskies emphatically answered 19 days later in Hartford with a 32-point victory that snapped St. John’s 13-game winning streak. The Johnnies shot just under 20 percent in that game. “This is all on me,” Pitino said after the 72-40 loss.
St. John’s hasn’t lost since.
“We never mentioned revenge. It was a championship at stake,” Pitino said Saturday night.
Round 3 in the Big East tournament final seemed inevitable. The Huskies and Johnnies ripped through the conference with a combined 35-5 regular season record, then won their four combined tournament games by an average of 16 points.
The first meeting at MSG definitely felt like a St. John’s home game. Not so much on Saturday night. The Huskies’ fans probably outnumbered Red Storm fans as their teams met in the Big East championship game for the first time in 26 years.
But for the second straight year, St. John’s cut down the nets on its home court.
“The first one was truly special,” Ejiofor said. “Obviously, it was the first time that I experienced winning at such a high level. But this second time coming around it was moreso not even about me, it was moreso about the new guys that came in. I wanted to win for them. I wanted them to feel the thrill of winning a championship here in MSG. And we accomplished that goal.”