In a press conference after securing a trip to the Big East Championship game, St. John’s head coach Rick Pitino praised his team’s resilience against Marquette by saying, ‘There’s no panic in this stock market.’
Well today, the stock market collapsed.
After winning the school’s first conference title in 25 years, expectations were high for the 2-seed St. John’s Red Storm in their first March Madness appearance under Pitino.
Instead, the team suffered what could be considered the first major upset of this year’s tournament when they fell to 10-seed Arkansas 75-66.
A number of factors contributed to St. John’s disastrous early exit, but one of the most surprising moves was Pitino’s decision to bench star forward RJ Luis Jr. late in the game.
Luis, who won Big East Player of the Year and was named Most Outstanding Player of the Big East Tournament, was pulled from the game with 4:56 remaining in the contest and did not appear again – despite it being a two-point contest at the time.
St. John’s head coach Rick Pitino fired back at a reporter for asking why he benched a star
Pitino sat Big East Player of the Year RJ Luis Jr. (12) for the last 5 minutes of a loss to Arkansas
Luis was unfortunately going through one of his worst shooting performances of the year
When asked by Newsday’s Roger Rubin why he ended up sitting Luis down for so long, Pitino replied, ‘[He] played 30 minutes. That’s a long time.’
Rubin followed up asking if he was tired and Pitino replied, ‘No. Played 30 minutes and I went with other people. You already know the answers, Roger. You’re asking leading questions. You already know it.’
It’s a very odd response from Pitino – especially considering that on the season, Luis averaged about 32 minutes per game.
But when asked if there was a particular reason why the benching was in order, Pitino hinted at Luis’ poor on-court performance as the logic.
‘You know he was 3-for-17 (FG); you know he was 0-for-3 (3s). So, you’re answering your own… I’m not gonna knock one of my players,’ Pitino said bluntly.
It was one of Luis’ worst games in a St. John’s uniform – with a final statline of nine points and seven rebounds.
The rest of the team didn’t stack up either. Star guard Kadary Richmond only had five points before fouling out with about six-and-a-half minutes remaining. Guard Aaron Scott shot an appalling 1-10. Simeon Wilcher only scored two points as he also was in foul trouble early.
Big man Zuby Ejiofor led the Johnnies with a 23 point, 12 rebound double-double. Backup guard Deivon Smith had 13 points and six rebounds to back him up.
But overall, the Red Storm shot an awful 28 percent from the field.
Arkansas shot much better from the field and were led by Billy Richmond III (24, red)
Even worse, Pitino (L) lost to longtime coaching rival and frenemy John Calipari (R)
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That included going 1-for-9 in the final three-and-a-half minutes of the game. Bizarrely, a St. John’s team that was 329th in the nation in 3-point shooting percentage decided to take five straight shots from deep in the final two minutes – and missed all of them.
At games end, that 3-point shooting came to haunt them as they only hit 2-of-22 attempts (an abysmal 9.1 percent) from beyond the arc.
Arkansas didn’t fare much better from deep (10.5 percent on 2-of-19 shooting) but did much better from the floor, shooting 42.9 percent.
Forward Billy Richmond III led the Razorbacks with 16 points on 6-10 shooting plus nine rebounds. Kartner Knox grabbed 15 points while guard Johnell Davis put up 13 points.
Adding insult to the injury for Pitino, the loss came to a Razorbacks team coached by longtime frenemy John Calipari.
Calipari’s Razorbacks now advance to the Sweet 16 for the second time in three years. They’ll play the winner of the game between 3-seed Texas Tech and 11-seed Drake.