NEW YORK -- The crowd of UConn fans at Madison Square Garden was starting to get loud.
After jumping out to a 22-point lead against the two-time defending champion, St. John's looked to be giving it all away. In four minutes, the Huskies cut the lead to nine, forcing Rick Pitino to call a timeout.
But before the coach could get a word in, Zuby Ejiofor chimed in.
"We got in a huddle, and Zuby said, 'Look, we've battled injuries. We don't wilt. We've been there before. We know what to do,'" Pitino said.
The Red Storm immediately pushed the lead back to double digits, where it would stay the rest of the game, cruising to an 89-75 win.
It was a far cry from what unfolded almost a year ago to the day, when St. John's had fallen at home to Seton Hall in a 68-62 loss Feb. 18, 2024. After that loss, Pitino unloaded on his players, calling the season "the most unenjoyable experience I've had since I've been coaching."
"We recruited the antithesis of the way I coach, with speed, quickness, fundamentals, strength and toughness," Pitino went on to tell the media that day. "It's a good group, they try hard, but they're just not very tough."
But much like the turnaround in that late-February win over UConn, the Red Storm have tapped into their spirit of relentlessness to go from the middle of the Big East standings to winning their first outright regular-season title since 1985 -- and emerging as a legitimate Final Four contender between Pitino's first and second seasons with the program.
There have been false dawns for the revival of St. John's basketball before, but this campaign has felt different. One season removed from missing the NCAA tournament altogether, the Red Storm have achieved their highest national ranking (No. 6) since Lou Carnesecca, clad in his signature sweaters, took them to No. 5 during the 1990-91 season. And they're doing it in a distinctly "New York basketball" kind of way -- with Brooklyn native Kadary Richmond leading on the court, another Hall of Fame coach walking the sideline, and aggressiveness and relentlessness on both ends.
It's the type of team longtime Johnnies fans have embraced in the past, the type they were desperate to see again at the Garden, with Pitino as their white whale.
Now the question is: Can this year's St. John's team do what even the teams led by Carnesecca and Chris Mullin could not and win a national championship?
Pitino sat at a conference table in his office in late October 2023, a couple of weeks before his first season at St. John's was set to begin. It didn't take long for him to express concern about the defense.
"The tough thing, though, is teaching 12 or 13 guys who were all the best offensive player on their team and they don't know how to play defense," Pitino told ESPN at the time. "Got the best player at VMI, the best player at Penn, the best player at Harvard, the best player -- or a terrific player -- at UMass, all really good offensive players. Can't guard anybody. So they're all good offensive players, but their forte is not defense."
His assessment was right: St. John's allowed more than one point per possession in 20 of its 33 games last season. (This season's team has allowed only eight opponents to hit that mark.)
In Pitino's 16 seasons at Louisville, the Cardinals ranked top-10 nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency 10 times, including No. 1 three times. His final team at Kentucky (1997) also ranked first overall at that end of the floor, while each of his three teams at Iona (2020-23) ranked first or second in the MAAC in defensive efficiency.
Those teams were predicated upon length, athleticism, pressuring the ball, turning teams over and blocking shots. They made teams uncomfortable.
Red Storm associate head coach Steve Masiello -- a walk-on at Kentucky under Pitino and, later, one of his assistants at Louisville from 2005 to 2011 -- said the urgency in building an entirely new roster in Pitino's first offseason at St. John's meant that certain things sometimes went overlooked.
"When we took the job, we tried to take the best players available ... check as many boxes. Those guys were terrific, but we didn't check enough boxes," Masiello told ESPN. "We had our deficiencies defensively, and as we were going through the year, we said we had to address those deficiencies."
Masiello went down to Houston in the offseason to watch Kelvin Sampson's team for a few days, just to get some new ideas and potential tweaks from what has been one of the nation's best defenses for the past several years. And when the Red Storm coaches looked at players to add, they had two main aims, Masiello said: "Length and athleticism. Those have to be two of the most important things we identify in this transfer portal."
Instead of pursuing low- and mid-major transfers, Pitino and his staff focused on players who had already proved they could handle the physicality and speed of high-major basketball. Richmond, who spent three years at Seton Hall, was one of the best players in the Big East; Deivon Smith had played in the SEC, ACC and Pac-12; Vince Iwuchukwu transferred from USC; and Aaron Scott was a proven 3-and-D player from North Texas.
"I think the coaching staff did a really great job of just bringing new pieces to this team that were going to be really bought in," Ejiofor told ESPN. "And the core guys, the returning guys from last year, were just basically preaching how important defense is and exactly what it takes, and you see exactly what it shows when everybody's connected on the defensive end."
Returning players have enjoyed the natural jump that comes with being in Pitino's program for a full season. RJ Luis has improved defensively en route to emerging as one of the best players in the Big East, while Ejiofor has developed into a switchable frontcourt defender who can hold his own against a variety of positions.
"Players, when they're here in a short window, they think offense is going to get them to where they want to go," Pitino told ESPN. "And I've convinced this team that -- we use the term about getting on Broadway. I said if you want to showcase your skills, winning is the only thing that does that. You'll never get the opportunity. You'll always be off-Broadway, and nobody will see you play.
"If you get on Broadway, then it's just a matter of, are your skills good enough? But until that point, the only way you can get there is through your defense and winning."
St. John's has developed into one of college basketball's elite defenses as a result of these season-over-season adjustments, with Pitino often using the word "relentless" to describe his team's personality at that end of the floor. The Red Storm lead the Big East in scoring defense and field goal percentage defense, with opponents scoring fewer than 66 points per game and shooting below 40% from the field. The Johnnies also rank inside the top 20 nationally in defensive turnover percentage, 2-point percentage defense, block percentage and steal percentage.
In the Feb. 23 matchup with UConn, the Red Storm scored 24 points off 18 turnovers for the Huskies, leaving Dan Hurley searching for answers.
"The pressure is one thing," Hurley said after the game. "Obviously it's disconcerting to start your possession just surviving to get the ball inbounds versus the pressure. But then I don't even think it's the full-court pressure with them. I just think it's the positionless switching that they're able to do, on-ball, off-ball, the veer switching. And then what makes it obviously work is just having all these big wings that are grown men, physiques, these guys are physical, and then Ejiofor. When Ejiofor gets out on guards, it's hard to take advantage of that, his movement and his ability to stay on the ball.
"They remind me of Houston, just what they do to you defensively and on the glass."
Then Hurley asked the question that most threatens St. John's title hopes: Is an elite defense and strong offensive rebounding enough to win a title, given St. John's shooting woes?
Rick Pitino and Dan Hurley share their thoughts after St. John's road win against Connecticut.
"They've got a championship-level defense," Hurley said. "I think they have championship-level offensive rebounding, and obviously how their season goes from here is going to, in large part, come down to being able to make enough shots."
On the season, the Red Storm are seventh in the Big East in offensive efficiency -- they rank last in 3-point shooting percentage and next-to-last in 2-point percentage and free throw percentage. They also rank near the bottom of Division I in nearly every perimeter shooting category: 3-pointers per game, 3-point percentage, 3-point attempt rate, percentage of total points from 3-pointers.
"I feel like we still have yet to show our offensive power," guard Simeon Wilcher said. "We just need to click. It is going to click at the right time."
"I would just say that we stick to what we're good at," Ejiofor added. "We're not a bad shooting team at all. We got really some of the best shooters in the Big East, and it shows in practice and the team development workouts as well. So once we get spacing right and pace right, I think we're going to be a really special team, especially on the offensive end."
For its part, St. John's has shown flashes of improvement from 3-point range in recent weeks. The Red Storm made 11 shots from deep against Villanova and nine against DePaul, then went 8-for-16 from behind the arc in the first half against UConn.
And Pitino does have experience taking teams that struggled shooting the 3 on deep runs in the NCAA tournament. His 2012 Louisville team shot just 31.8% from 3 and still reached the Final Four. His 2013 team shot 33.3% and ranked 13th in the Big East in percentage of total points from 3s and still won its since-vacated national title. And his 2015 team ranked in the 300s nationally in 3-point percentage and still advanced to the Elite Eight.
In fact, the two closest efficiency profiles to this St. John's team at BartTorvik are 2012 Louisville and 2015 Louisville.
"I think we're going to get better shooting the basketball," Pitino told ESPN. "I think we're coming out of that slump.
"I'm not concerned about the 3-point shot. I am concerned about our free throw shooting, because in the NCAA tournament, it comes down to free throw shooting a lot of times."
Opposing coaches aren't writing off the Johnnies simply based on their shooting, either.
"There's so many different factors that go into winning, and there's so many factors that go into losing. Shooting is one that people pay a lot of attention to because it's so obvious. But if there's 50 of those factors and shooting is one of them, they're really good at the other 49," Marquette's Shaka Smart said after the Golden Eagles lost to St. John's. "They do a terrific job of playing to their strengths and understanding that in the paint is where they're going to have a huge advantage and on the glass, and they did a great job pressing that advantage."
The late-February win over UConn at the Garden felt like a full-circle moment for the Rick Pitino era at St. John's.
In the Northeast, the Garden has become known as "Storrs South" for the way UConn fans fill the arena whenever the Huskies play there. In February 2024, when the Red Storm hosted UConn during the regular season, the fans were split. The Huskies rolled past St. John's by 13, continuing their recent dominance of the Red Storm.
This matchup was different. It wasn't Storrs South. Red-clad fans filled the seats, and chants aimed at Dan Hurley were heard throughout the game. There was no confusion: It was a St. John's home game. The Red Storm led by 22 en route to an 89-75 win, the first time since 1999-2000 they have completed a regular-season sweep of UConn.
"I can assure you we had most of the fans tonight," Pitino said afterward.
Perhaps more than anything, it was another sign St. John's is back -- one of the 10 winningest programs of all time, but a program that hasn't had an NCAA tournament win since 2000, a Final Four appearance since 1985 or a Big East title since 1992.
"This is just what Coach P does," Wilcher said.