With Dominant Big East Run, St. John’s Brings Back Good Old Memories
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St. John's forward Dillon Mitchell (1) and St. John's head coach Rick Pitino embrace each other during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game against UConn in the championship of the Big East tournament, Saturday, March 14, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
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Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.As St. John’s coach Rick Pitino spoke following the Red Storm’s 72-52 victory over Connecticut in the Big East Conference championship game Saturday night, Mark Jackson and Walter Berry sat silently on a table near the front of the press conference room at Madison Square Garden.
In 1986, Berry was the national player of the year, while Jackson led the nation in assists and the Red Storm tied for first in the Big East regular season and then won the tournament title.
Forty years later, Pitino has St. John’s back to where it was back then, with the Red Storm a national power and capturing New York City’s attention, something that seemed impossible to occur again before he arrived three years ago.
With Saturday’s dominant win, St. John’s became the first program in league history to win the outright conference regular season and postseason titles in consecutive years.
“There’s so much history with St. John's, and we brought it all back in three years,” Pitino said.
After Friday’s semifinal victory over Seton Hall, Pitino noted how the current players understandably don’t remember the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s when St. John’s was the premier basketball program in the Eastern region under coaches Joe Lapchick and Lou Carnesecca.
From Lapchick’s first season in 1956-57 through Carnesecca’s last in 1991-92, the Red Storm made the NCAA tournament 21 times, won three National Invitation Tournaments and had at least 20 victories in a season on 22 occasions. But save for a brief stretch in the late 1990s, St. John’s struggled in the 30 years post-Carnesecca until Pitino arrived in 2023.
“I’m really, really proud,” Pitino said on Saturday. “I know Louie is looking down on us with great pride. Joe Lapchick’s looking down on us with great pride.”
Instead of shying away from the past, Pitino embraced St. John’s history. He grew close to Carnesecca, who died in November 2024, just over a month shy of his 100th birthday. And he contacted former players such as Jackson and Berry, who weren’t as involved with the program as the Red Storm changed coaches several times and never found the right fit.
“I’ve been away from the program for a long time,” Berry said. “But when Rick Pitino came back, I came back.”
He added: “We talk a lot because we’ve got history. We have friends from back in the NBA days. It’s been good.”
Jackson, meanwhile, has known Pitino just as long. After Jackson graduated from St. John’s in 1987, the New York Knicks selected him in the first round of the NBA draft. The next month, the franchise hired Pitino, who had previously been Providence College’s coach and was just 34 years old. That season, Jackson was the rookie of the year, while Pitino led the Knicks to the playoffs for the first time in three seasons. The next year, the Knicks won 52 games as Jackson made the All-Star team.
“To have Mark here means a lot to me,” Pitino said.
Jackson was also in a reflective mood Saturday.
“It means so much,” Jackson said. “I think about coach Carnesecca, who’s looking down. I think about the conversations I had with him about coach Pitino, about this program. I can remember specifically one conversation where in the middle of it, he said, ‘Jacks, the son of a gun is a genius.’”
Indeed, Pitino on Saturday became the only coach in Big East history to win consecutive tournament tiles with two programs. He also won the championship with Louisville in 2012 and 2013.
Saturday’s victory was the fifth time St. John’s won the Big East tournament title, and by far the most dominant. It was much different than 1986, when the Red Storm overcame a 13-point deficit and defeated Syracuse 70-69 on Berry’s last-second block. St. John’s, the No. 1 seed, scored the game’s first 10 points Saturday, led 40-27 at halftime and never trailed.
UConn, the No. 2 seed, cut the deficit to 49-42 with 12:34 remaining. But after Pitino called a timeout, St. John’s forward Bryce Hopkins made a jumper and Red Storm forward Zuby Ejiofor connected on a 3-pointer for a 54-42 advantage. St. John’s led by double digits the rest of the way, including a 13-0 run that put the Red Storm ahead 72-49 with 2:38 left, the largest lead of the game.
Ejiofor was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player after averaging 19.7 points, 8 rebounds, 4 blocks and 3 assists, including 18 points, nine rebounds, seven blocks and three steals on Saturday.
“He had numbers like I had,” Berry said, laughing. “He really played well tonight. I mean, seven blocks is incredible, man. That’s Hakeem Olajuwon work.”
Ejiofor also helped St. John’s limit UConn to season-lows in points (52, nine off the previous low) and field goal percentage (33.9%). The Huskies made just 3 of 19 3-pointers (15.8%, which is the second-worst percentage this season) and committed a season-high 17 turnovers, including 11 in the first half. It was much different than the last time the teams met on Feb. 25 in Hartford, Conn., when UConn won, 72-40, snapping the Red Storm’s 13-game winning streak. It was the fewest number of points a Pitino-led team had ever scored since he began coaching in college in 1975.
After that loss, Pitino told his players that Louisville lost to Notre Dame 90-57 in 2009 and made the NCAA tournament’s Elite Eight, while the 2012 Cardinals lost to Providence 90-59 and ended up advancing to the Final Four. Since then, the Red Storm have proven the UConn performance was a fluke, although Pitino insisted the players didn’t need any motivation Saturday.
“We never even mentioned revenge because we have so much respect for Connecticut,” Pitino said. “We just talked about championship.”
With a win Saturday, UConn (29-5) may have been a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. But now the Huskies enter the tournament on a down note, having struggled for the second Saturday in a row. One week after a 68-62 loss to Marquette cost UConn a share of the regular season Big East title, the Huskies again couldn’t get anything going on offense and had a sub-par defensive performance, albeit against a much tougher opponent on its home floor.
“The group is crushed,” UConn coach Dan Hurley said. “We laid an egg in something that we desperately wanted to win. I mean, we just laid an egg.”
Hurley said UConn would stay overnight in their New York City hotel and watch film of the game Sunday, following the same pattern the Huskies had in 2023. Back then, UConn lost to Marquette in the Big East tournament semifinals and then won the national championship.
“We’ll leave it here,” Hurley said. “We know that we play our best basketball in the NCAA tournament and versus nonconference teams. Our group knows that.”
He added: “This is a really, really physical league. That was a really, really, really physical game. We’re excited to play in the NCAA tournament that doesn't get played like that.”
St. John’s (28-6) is looking forward to competing in the NCAAs, too, especially with a coach who has won national titles with Kentucky (1996) and Louisville (2013) and a player in Ejiofor who is tough for any team to handle.
Ejiofor was the Big East player of the year, defensive player of the year and scholar-athlete of the year. UConn center Emeka Okafor in 2004 is the only other Big East player to win all three of those awards. That season, the Huskies won the NCAA tournament.
While these Red Storm are not considered championship favorites, they enter the NCAAs as a likely No. 3, No. 4 or No. 5 seed and having won 19 of their past 20 games. Pitino revamped the roster following last season, when St. John’s finished 31-5 and lost in the second round of the NCAAs, winning its first tournament game in 25 years.
Ejiofor is the lone returning player among the team’s top seven scorers. St. John’s added six transfers who have made immediate impacts in Hopkins (Providence), Oziyah Sellers (Stanford), Ian Jackson (North Carolina), Joson Sanon (Arizona State), Dillon Mitchell (Cincinnati) and Dylan Darling (Idaho State).
After Saturday’s victory, they all celebrated on the Madison Square Garden floor. At 9:26 pm, Pitino and Ejiofor walked up the ladder together. Pitino let Ejiofor cut the final strand of the net. The senior forward then waived it over his head as Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” blared over the loudspeakers.
“That guy’s a total butt-kicker,” Hurley said. “He’s on the handful of best players I’ve ever coached against in college. I mean, that guy is a true difference-maker that elevates everyone around him.”
Although his college career is still not over and he has more goals to accomplish in the NCAA tournament, Ejiofor is sure to be remembered by St. John’s fans for decades to come, just like Jackson and Berry. After Pitino’s press conference Saturday, the two former legendary players beamed with pride as they discussed their alma mater.
“The St. John’s basketball program has come a long way,” Berry said. “They’re back on top. And I think with Rick Pitino, they’re going to stay on top.”