St. John's Red Storm
Tuesday, January 13th, 2026 at Madison Square Garden, New York, NY / Wednesday, February 18, 2026 at Fiserv Forum
Head Coach: Rick Pitino (761-308 overall, 51-18 at St. John's)
Three-Year NET Average: 47.7
Three-Year kenpom Average: 39.0
Projected 2025-26 T-Rank: 8
Zuby Ejiofor averaged 21.0 ppg/11.3 rpg against Marquette
Photo by Patrick McDermott | Getty Images
Rick Pitino's second year at St. John's took the Big East by storm. After a solid but unspectacular non-con in which they lost a pair of close games to NCAA teams Baylor and Georgia, the Johnnies went 18-2 in league play and won the Big East Tournament, matching UConn's record 21 total Big East victories from a season before. St. John's also won their first NCAA Tournament game since 2000. The only returning player of significance back is Big East Player of the Year favorite Zuby Ejiofor, but he's surrounded by a loaded transfer class that has some pundits ranking them as high as #1 in the nation going into 2025-26. It didn't take long for Rick Pitino to reestablish St. John's reputation as a national power.
Style of Play
Rick Pitino has shifted his offensive philosophy from dribble-drive to getting more action out of cuts. His teams have taken a lot of mid-range the last two years and rely on the bigs to clean up misses and get putbacks. The Red Storm cut against modern basketball tendencies, ranking near the bottom of the nation in three-point rate (341st) and percentage (340th). Expect that to change next year. Pitino brought in perimeter threats with an eye on not being knocked out of the NCAA Tournament while shooting 2/22 from three again like last year. But who is going to create those shots?
The chart below shows assist rates as well as the percentage of shots each potential St. John's rotation player took by range (three-point, mid-range, at the rim) and how often those made field goals were assisted. The only player on the roster that was able to both create shots for others and get shots for himself was Dylan Darling, who did that against Big Sky competition and isn't expected to start. To read the chart, in assist rate, green is good, red is varying degrees of bad. In the shot rates, blue indicates a player is unlikely to take shots in that area and orange indicates they take shots there frequently. In assisted rates, blue indicates the player cannot get that shot on his own and orange indicates they are able to create their own shot.
Assist rate in and of itself is not one of the most important factors in offensive efficiency. That said, this team will likely be forced into one-on-one situations on offense regularly. When players tasked to create for themselves struggle to get clean looks from three and can't get to the rim, they tend to settle for mid-range shots. St. John's will need to hope they have tough shot makers because that's what many of their looks are likely to be. The best chance for efficient offense will be by hitting the offensive glass, where they do have numerous strong options. The roster makeup indicates an offense similar to Buzz Williams' Texas A&M squads with less effective ball movement. I'm skeptical of this offense for two reasons. First, as the chart above indicates, historically these are guys that need others to create shots for them to succeed. Second, over the past two years St. John's has taken a ton of mid-range shots. If these guys can't get their own shots and settle for bad shots, that's how you end up ranked #68 nationally in offense (2025 kenpom rank).
Defensively, last year's St. John's was back to the kind of team Pitino wants to see. They were an attacking defense, playing tight man-to-man, creating turnovers, challenging everything, and forcing opponents into late-shot clock situations when they didn't turn them over first. St. John's had elite perimeter defenders and when opponents did get inside, Zuby Ejiofor is a competent shot blocker and even better positional defender who uses his size to control the paint. The problem this year is that St. John's doesn't have the defensive personnel they had last year. The multitude of elite perimeter defenders just isn't there, and of the three players that posted the best DBPR in their most recent season (Mitchell, Ejiofor, Hopkins), it's unlikely that all three can play significant minutes together because of positional overlap and the reality that none of the three really stretch the floor. This chart shows the defensive block rate, steal percentage, and Defensive Baynesian Performance Rating from EvanMiya.com, which is generally considered the best single number for individual defensive analysis.
Unless Darling, Sanon, Sellers, and Jackson transform into next-level defenders, the perimeter defense will be a sieve leaving Mitchell and Ejiofor overextended trying to cover for them most of the time. This team will get killed any time they are forced to switch and teams with effective ball movement will pick them apart. Having just 1-2 competent defenders trying to cover up for 3-4 poor defenders is how you end up ranked #57 nationally in defense (2024 kenpom rank).
2025-26 Outlook
This might be the most talented team in the league, but I just don't see how this roster fits together to find success. The national consensus is that this team will have best offensive traits of 2024 and the best defensive traits of 2025. When I dig into this roster, however, I see the worst defensive traits of 2024 and the worst offensive traits of 2025.
On talent alone they should be a tournament team, but there are serious questions about the ability to create good shots on offense that no one is asking. The only way I see this offense consistently creating quality shots is if Dylan Darling is a 32-35 mpg guy, but I'm not at all convinced he's a high-major player, especially on the defensive end. There are glaring holes in the defense that can't be papered over by the guys on this roster. Unless Rick can find a way to succeed with two power forwards and two centers, none of whom can stretch the floor, there are going to be places to easily exploit the defense and players like Ejiofor and Mitchell will be forced to constantly cover up for the perimeter gaffes.
Since the transfer portal opened, Pitino started by saying Ian Jackson is his point guard, Zach Brazilier wrote a feature on Dylan Darling being in the mix to start, and after their first scrimmage Pitino named Oziyah Sellers the starting point guard. In the middle of all this over the summer, Rick Pitino said "There are no point guards anymore...Who's the point guard of the Knicks, Lakers, Celtics, Thunder?" While there are real questions about who the St. John's point guard will be, Jalen Brunson (Knicks), Luka Doncic (Lakers), and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (Thunder) all are in the top-10 of NBA jersey sales for this past year. A college coach not recognizing some of the NBA's biggest stars may be mildly amusing, but there are bigger problems with that statement. Some NBA teams like Boston create offense through multiple creative hubs, as illustrated this past season as the Celtics had five players with 17.3%-27.0% assist rates. Rick Pitino isn't in the NBA and only has one guy with an assist rate over 12.0%.
In the college game, the only reason one could argue you don't need one point guard to win a National Championship is because in this generation, you typically need two. From Villanova with Ryan Arcidiacono and Jalen Brunson through UConn's pairing of Tristen Newton and Hassan Diarra, the trend in college basketball has been multiple creators. But the bigger problem for St. John's is that the teams that do eschew the traditional point guard have other players that can create shots. On this roster, Darling is it. This isn't a team with a wealth of creative options, it's a glut of players that have historically relied on teammates to get them their shots. The only place most of these guys can get their own shot is in the mid-range.
Last year, St. John's was in the 94th percentile in mid-range shots taken while scoring just 0.77 points/shot, even though they had a roster of players that historically were good at getting to the rim. The year before they were in the 82nd percentile in mid-range shots taken while scoring just 0.84 points/shot. That ranked 11th and 10th (out of 12) respectively in terms of the most efficient play types St. John's ran according to Hoop-Explorer. Essentially, this St. John's team is made up of players that cannot create their own shots on the perimeter, cannot get to the rim, and are playing for a coach that won't discourage mid-range shots, which are among the least efficient shots they can take. This is a recipe for mediocre offensive efficiency.
The optimistic St. John's fan will have to hope the offense looks like Houston's, with elite three-point shooting, offensive glass dominance, and never turning the ball over as the hallmarks of an offense that overcomes mid-range tendencies. But Pitino's offense has ranked in the top-60 nationally in three-point percentage once this millennium and that was over 20 years ago. As the chart above shows, few of these guys are able to get their own shots from three, unlike Houston with L.J. Cryer and Milos Uzan able to get shots off the bounce. His teams historically are okay at protecting the ball, but have never ranked in the top-20 like Houston did the past two years. Further, Houston was only incorporating one new rotation player into their system. Reforging this offense into Houston's doesn't feel like something that will happen overnight with players who are all just getting to know each other.
Defensively, the thought process is that if you give Rick Pitino players, he will turn them into a great defense. That argument has been proven false, however. In 2023-24, Pitino famously criticized his team's defensive effort when the St. John's defense was #31 in T-Rank's defensive efficiency. After that rant, the defense truly cratered, ranking #139 the rest of the way. Last year's elite defense was made up of known quality defenders like Richmond, Ejiofor, Scott, Luis, and Smith. There's virtually no lineup St. John's can put on the court that has three quality defenders without crippling the offensive spacing. The interior defense and rebounding could be excellent, but that will come at the cost of open looks from deep and the ability for movement offenses to isolate and pick apart even their plus defenders by forcing switches.
One Man's Opinion
When I first saw the names coming across the transfer wire, I was convinced Pitino was going to work magic again. But the more I looked at this roster, the less I understood the way it would fit together. Modern college offense relies on prioritization of quality shots and multiple players to create those shots for themselves or others. Modern college defense relies on having defenders at multiple levels to switch effectively and hide poor defenders. St. John's doesn't have either of these things. While there are talented, coveted players on this roster, they didn't exactly elevate their previous teams, as Dillon Mitchell, Joson Sanon, Oziyah Sellers, and Dylan Darling all missed the NCAA Tournament last year while Ian Jackson's team barely got in after a preseason top-10 ranking. This is a team built to disappoint in big moments, with breakdowns on the defensive end and one-on-one offense ending in bad shots.
I know this won't meet consensus, but I'm picking St. John's 4th in the Big East. There's too much talent to think this isn't a tourney team. There's too much experience on the sideline to think Pitino can't figure out a way to make some of this work. But the question of shot creation is real. I don't think Darling can play 32+ mpg at this level and there isn't enough shot creation for this offense to really work by committee. Zuby Ejiofor is seemingly an All-American and consensus Big East Player of the Year, but 57% of his made baskets last year were assisted. Where are those coming from if no one is feeding the post the way Kadary Richmond and Deivon Smith did? He's not scoring 15+ ppg on offensive rebounds alone. And I don't see how a defense with putrid defenders on the perimeter works. The reason St. John's was so good was because Richmond, Smith, Luis, Wilcher, and Ejiofor all had quickness and range that stretched beyond their individual position. They were also all plus defenders before St. John's turned into the #2 efficiency defense in the country. If it was just Darling, you can hide one bad defender. Maybe by mixing in zone and creative switching, you can hide two. But there's no way you can hide three bad defenders, especially when all three will be on the perimeter because any lineup with Ejiofor/Mitchell/Hopkins doesn't work on offense.
If anyone can prove me wrong, it's Rick Pitino. He's one of the best in the business for a reason. Given a full season, maybe this team will figure it out and be at their best by March, able to compete for a second weekend. But two years ago, we saw that he can't wave a magic wand and turn bad defenders into a good defense. Last year we saw that when he doesn't stop players with bad offensive tendencies from their own poor shot selection, it leads to bad offense. In 20 of the past 21 seasons, a team ranked in the AP preseason top-10 finished the year outside the top-25 and this St. John's team looks like a prime candidate to be that team in 2026. Maybe I'm wrong and Pitino really has one of the best teams in the country, but to me it looks like the Emperor has no clothes and someone should be willing to say it.
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