St. John’s hasn’t played with a national ranking in in nearly six years. It’s been even longer for Hall of Famer Rick Pitino to coach a team highlighted in The Associated Press men’s college basketball poll.
That changes with the 22nd-ranked Red Storm returning to the poll, marking the first time Pitino is leading a ranked team since his time at Louisville. The first game comes at home against Wagner as part of the AP Top 25 national schedule, followed by a matchup in Madison Square Garden against a New Mexico team coached by his son Richard.
Pitino — who won an NCAA championship at Kentucky in 1996 and a later-vacated one at Louisville in 2013 — is focused on fixing flaws that had his team down four at halftime against visiting Quinnipiac before taking over after halftime.
“Last year at this time we would’ve lost this game,” Pitino said after that 96-73 win. “But this team did the right things to win this game. I’m just hoping that this team evolves into the team that we had at the end of the year last year, because right now transition defense and man defense is a major, major weakness.”
Still, St. John’s (2-0) is ranked No. 22 in KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency by scoring 115.8 points per 100 possessions, while the defense is ranked 14th by allowing 94.7 points per 100 possessions.
The Red Storm hadn’t been ranked since spending a week at No. 24 in January 2019. And that was one of just 10 appearances since 2001.
For Pitino, it marks the first time he will coach an AP Top 25 team since the final poll of the 2016-17 season, not long before he was fired at Louisville after that school became entangled in a federal corruption probe into the sport.
The game in the Garden offers a notable matchup, both with the Lobos having beaten then-ranked UCLA and the family-reunion angle.
“You don’t pay attention to the coach down at the other end,” Pitino said. “I’ll coach against my son, and I don’t even want to look at him. You just want to be totally focused. He’s not going to want to look at me. It’s about New Mexico winning and us winning.”
Cramping watch
The annual Champions Classic features No. 1 Kansas meeting Michigan State and the nightcap featuring No. 6 Duke against No. 19 Kentucky in Atlanta.
The latter game features star Blue Devils freshman and preseason Associated Press All-American Cooper Flagg. The 6-foot-9 forward has shown off an all-around floor game but has also had cramping issues in each of his first two college games.
“We’ve got to help him,” third-year coach Jon Scheyer said after a win against Army. “I’m not happy about it for him. We’ve got to help him, and we will. Right after this, I can promise you, I’m going to be meeting (with team staff), I don’t care if it’s all night. We can’t have that happening, bottom line.”
A Final Four meeting that wasn’t
The week’s slate of ranked-against-ranked games is headlined by a matchup that could’ve come in last year’s national championship game: Alabama vs. Purdue.
The second-ranked Crimson Tide visit the 13th-ranked Boilermakers. They met early last season, with Purdue edging Alabama before both reached last year’s Final Four from opposite halves of the NCAA bracket. Purdue advanced to the final by beating surprising N.C. State and Alabama fell in the second semifinal against a UConn team on its way to history as a repeat champion.
Alabama, led by preseason AP All-American Mark Sears, enters ranked third in KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency (120.5) while Purdue is ninth (118.5).
Road work
The Alabama-Purdue game is one of five true road games for ranked teams, including No. 9 Arizona visiting Wisconsin.
The list includes No. 15 Marquette traveling to Maryland, No. 20 Florida facing instate foe Florida State and No. 21 Ohio State visiting No. 23 Texas A&M.
Watch list
While Illinois and Texas Tech led the list of vote-getters among unranked teams, there’s a notable matchup just outside the AP Top 25 with Wake Forest’s visit to Xavier.
Steve Forbes’ Demon Deacons (3-0) are picked to finish third in the Atlantic Coast Conference. But the program hasn’t been to the NCAA Tournament since 2017 and hasn’t been ranked since February 2010, putting Wake Forest alongside Stanford (March 2008), Boston College (January 2009) and Georgia Tech (also February 2010) as ACC teams that have been unranked for more than a decade.
Xavier (2-0) is picked third in the Big East and is one of the most experienced teams in the country.
The game is the Skip Prosser Classic, named in honor of the former Wake Forest and Xavier coach who died in July 2007 of a heart attack.
