March Madness: Rick Pitino’s curious coaching decisions prove costly for St. John’s in NCAA tournament loss

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At the most critical juncture of his team’s dream season, with a second-round NCAA tournament matchup against No. 10 Arkansas hanging in the balance, legendary St. John’s coach Rick Pitino made a curious choice.

He removed Big East Player of the year RJ Luis Jr. from the floor with 4:56 to play after he had just drained a pair of foul shots to cut the No. 2 Johnnies’ deficit to two.

For the rest of his team’s season-ending 75-66 loss, Luis did not reenter the game. He watched solemnly from the St. John’s bench, powerless to help a cold-shooting Johnnies team that tallied just four points the rest of the game.

Luis entered Saturday’s game scoring a team-best 18.5 points per game. He didn’t even get halfway to his season average against 10th-seeded Arkansas. He shot a nightmarish 3-for-17 from the field, struggling, like many of his teammates, to finish at the rim against the Razorbacks’ thicket of long, athletic interior defenders. He also had some moments where his shot selection could have been more judicious and he looked like he was pressing.

When asked during his postgame press conference why he sat Luis down the stretch, Pitino alluded to the junior guard’s off night on a big stage without actually admitting why he benched his team’s leading scorer.

“He played 30 minutes,” Pitino initially responded tersely. “That’s a long time.”

“So he was tired?” Newsday’s Roger Rubin followed up.

“No, [he] played 30 minutes and I went with other people,” Pitino responded testily. “You already know the answers, Roger. You’re asking leading questions. You already know it. Don’t ask leading questions. You already know why he didn’t play.”

The question was a fair one, even if Pitino didn’t like it. He opened himself to criticism by benching one of the players who got St. John’s to this point. It was an especially odd decision considering St. John’s was already down its other primary shot creator after standout guard Kadary Richmond fouled out several minutes earlier.

While Luis had struggled all day generating clean looks against Arkansas’ shot blockers, he was still the most likely remaining St. John’s perimeter player to catch fire down the stretch. It wasn’t like anyone else was doing any better. Removing center Zuby Ejiofor’s 7-for-12 shooting, the rest of the Johnnies shot an anemic 14-for-63 from the field.

When Pitino was asked if there was a specific moment that contributed to his decision to leave Luis on the bench, he bristled at the question and chose not to answer.

“You know he was 3-for-17,” Pitino said. “So you’re answering your own — I’m not going to knock one of my players.”

Maybe Pitino was in an ornery mood because he suffered another heartbreaking loss to onetime rival John Calipari. Or perhaps it was that Pitino recognizes this was an opportunity squandered. He’s 72 years old. As brilliant a coach as he is and as much as he still seems to have left in the tank, he isn’t guaranteed to have another St. John’s team that’s as formidable as this one.

Fueled by an array of tough, physical guards and Ejiofor’s interior presence, Pitino molded St. John’s into one of college basketball’s top teams. They captured New York’s imagination in a way no Johnnies team has since the days of Lou Carnesecca, winning 31 games, running away with the Big East title and backing that up last weekend with a conference tournament crown.

St. John’s might have made a deep NCAA tournament run, except the Johnnies ran into a team built to expose their season-long lack of shooting. Pitino’s team collectively shot barely 30% from behind the arc this season, putting them 328th in the nation. That meant they were either going to have to hit some shots they normally don’t against Arkansas or try to find success driving the ball into the teeth of the Razorbacks’ defense.

The Johnnies tried both options. Neither worked.

They went 2-for-22 from behind the arc. They had seven shots blocked at the rim and countless others altered. The only consistent offense they mustered was Ejiofor converting offensive rebounds into put-backs.

“They took away a lot that we do,” Pitino said. “Offensively we did not share the basketball enough. That was our demise.”

That was part of their demise.

Another aspect was Richmond’s inability to impact the game because of foul trouble. Pitino kept him on the bench for the final 13:13 of the first half after he picked up his second foul. Then Richmond fouled out anyway on a phantom call with more than six minutes remaining in the game.

It also didn’t help that St. John’s struggled to keep quick, athletic Arkansas guards Boogie Fland, DJ Wagner and Johnell Davis out of the lane. They got to the paint enough to make up for the Razorbacks’ own woeful 2-for-19 shooting from behind the arc.

So Arkansas continues its redemption story after an 0-5 start to SEC play. And Calipari gets the critics off his back after the way he faltered late in his Kentucky tenure.

Meanwhile, St. John’s fans will be left to wonder if the outcome might have been different had Luis been on the floor late or had Richmond played more than 16 minutes.

“They were the better team,” Pitino said. “They deserve to move on and we don’t.”

This news was originally published on this post .

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