As fans have been up in arms about the St. John's basketball team being the fifth seed in the March Madness tournament, some believe the program was snubbed from being higher. With some believing the St. John's basketball team was screwed with their March Madness placement, head coach Rick Pitino would give his reactions to the spot.

With Pitino and the Red Storm setting their sights on the 12th-seeded Northern Iowa in the first game of the national tournament, there are still fans who are bewildered about the fifth-seed placement. Despite their successful season that was capped off by beating UConn in the Big East championship, Pitino would even say that he expected to be fifth.

“Well, I thought we'd be a fifth seed. A couple of guys in my set thought it was possible to be a fourth seed,” Pitino said, according to Jennifer X. Williams. “But they don't take into account how you're playing at the end of the year. The old days, like 8, 10 years ago, it counted the last 10 games of the season, is what they really looked at. They don't do that anymore.”

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“It's all metrics from the first game to the last game, the last game doesn't mean any more than the first game you play, and because the Big East was really weak from a NET standpoint, like we lost to Providence, who I think's a damn good basketball team, they were a quad three loss for us. So we got to get the Big East stronger,” Pitino continued.

Pitino seems to have a level-headed view of being the fifth seed, with the main goal for the program, obviously, being to win a national title. The journey for the Red Storm starts on Friday night against the Northern Iowa Panthers.