St. John’s crushes DePaul for impressive win in Big East opener
Rick Pitino was right.
The betting line for this game was way off.
St. John’s should’ve been favored by a lot more than 14.5 points.
Of course, Pitino felt the spread was too high, predicting a “flat out war” for the Johnnies in their Big East opener against DePaul Tuesday night.
His players may have used that as their own personal bulletin board material, because they treated DePaul like a low-major that didn’t deserve to share the Carnesecca Arena court.
The Johnnies shook off their recent slow starts and crushed DePaul, 89-61, to open up league play with a convincing victory.
The Blue Demons, coming off a blowout win over Wichita State, are improved under new coach Chris Holtmann.
It just didn’t look like it against the Johnnies.
“I was shocked tonight — shocked is the only word,” Pitino said after the Johnnies won their fourth consecutive game. “Our staff was sick over this game. We were preparing as if it was the last game of the season and we had to win it, because of the way they shoot the ball. But our defense tonight was absolutely brilliant.”
He added: “This was our best game by far in so many different areas.”
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St. John’s led by 11 at halftime and scored 17 of the first 21 points after the break to turn this into a laugher. It was over by the first media timeout of the second half. There was no letup.
St. John’s was focused, intense and determined.
An aggressive Kadary Richmond made sure of that, scoring nine of his 18 points in the run to start the second half.
RJ Luis led St. John’s with 19 points and five rebounds, Simeon Wilcher added 16 points and Zuby Ejiofor followed with 12 points, seven rebounds and four blocks.
Making his first start since a one-game suspension, Deivon Smith continued his impressive play of late with nine points, eight assists, six rebounds and five steals.
“Our team had total respect for them and were totally locked in,” Pitino said.
It was flat out domination. St. John’s (9-2, 1-0) was plus-12 on the glass, racked up 56 points in the paint and turned 20 turnovers into 27 points.
Most impressive was the Johnnies’ 3-point defense.
DePaul (8-3, 0-1) entered as one of the best 3-point shooting teams in the country at a shade over 40 percent and St. John’s was 234th nationally defending the 3-point arc.
They held DePaul to 30 percent (6 of 20) from distance, and half of those came after the result was well in hand.
“I think we made a huge jump,” Smith said. “That’s been a strong, strong plea from Coach, stopping the 3-ball. We probably had a few lapses today, but we did a good job on a good shooting team. We limited them to a certain amount and didn’t let their best players get going.
“I said it in the pregame, our biggest goal was putting two halves together, not starting slow. Finishing those last four minutes of the first half and coming out strong [after halftime]. I definitely thought we did that today.”
Pitino wasn’t ready to call this a breakthrough. It was just one complete performance. He wants to see consistency.
“I think we played great tonight. I think we have the potential to be an outstanding team” Pitino said. “I haven’t seen it, except the Virginia game and tonight. … Are we taking a quantum leap? We’ll see when we play Providence on the road [on Friday] for the first Big East road game in probably the toughest road environment in the Big East.”