The St. John’s Red Storm punched their ticket to the semifinals of the Big East Tournament against Seton Hall following their 85-72 win over Providence on Thursday. It’s a quick turnaround with a back-to-back on Friday night against the Pirates, a situation that left St. John’s head coach Rick Pitino cracking a joke as they head into the next round of the Big East Tournament, as per NBC Sports.
When asked how he felt about St. John’s advancing to the Big East Tournament Semifinals, Rick Pitino joked that he was going to make the team practice on Thursday night.
On the other half of the Big East brackets, the winner of between UConn and Xavier will play the winner between Villanova and Georgetown for the other semifinal game of the conference tournament.
For the Red Storm, they are going for back-to-back Big East Tournament championships. The past couple seasons have been an abrupt turnaround for St. John’s since Pitino took the helm as head coach. This is Pitino’s third season as Red Storm head coach.
Last year, Pitino broke a streak of five consecutive seasons that St. John’s had missed the NCAA Tournament. Regardless of the outcome of the Big East Tournament, the Red Storm are surely headed to back-t0-back March Madness appearances.
This season, Pitino reached a major career milestone of 900 coaching wins. He’s always been one of the top coaches in college basketball history despite some of the NCAA infractions that have occurred at his previous stops.
Pitino has won two national championships during his coaching career at Kentucky and Louisville respectively. Although the Louisville title in 2012-13 was vacated due to NCAA violations.
The Red Storm are now primed to make a strong NCAA Tournament run, a season after being eliminated in the round of 32.
