There was a celebration on the Madison Sq. Backyard ground when the clock hit triple zeroes and St. John’s had escaped with a victory Saturday afternoon.
Contained in the Johnnies locker room, although, Rick Pitino took the glass half-empty method.
“They think I’m going to jump up and down, say, ‘What a great win.’ It’s just the opposite,” he stated after Kadary Richmond’s jumper with three seconds left despatched Fifteenth-ranked St. John’s to a heart-stopping 68-66 win over Windfall. “You lose games when you don’t pay attention to your job, and they didn’t pay attention to their jobs. We’re very fortunate and very pleased we won, but very disappointed with the way we played down the stretch — not offensively, but defensively.”
Pitino spent most of his postgame information convention important of the efficiency. The Crimson Storm (19-3, 10-1) held a 19-point lead with 8:32 left and coughed it up. Their fourth-ranked protection fell aside, undone by Windfall’s unimaginable 3-point capturing. The Friars hit six 3-point photographs over the ultimate 6:28, and had been 12-for-28 from distance for the sport.
Even after Richmond’s shot, Pitino didn’t like the ultimate possession defensively. Had Windfall swung the ball, it may’ve had an open shot, fairly than Bensley Joseph’s half-court prayer that didn’t come shut.
“I don’t mean to be overly disappointed. It’s just little things that irk the hell out of me,” he stated. “Like the last play, not picking up a guy running down the left sideline after we make a bucket, not running the right spacing on an offensive play, defensively [not backing] up below the pro 3-point line. Those things you can control. You can’t control a missed free throw, you can’t control a missed shot. But you can control those things, and we didn’t control that, and that’s the disappointing thing for me.”
Pitino felt his gamers began worrying an excessive amount of about missed photographs and free throws, and it carried over to lackadaisical protection.
They gave a top quality 3-point capturing crew open seems to be, and almost paid for it with a loss.
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It was out of character for this group. The Johnnies have ceaselessly gained this season with protection, even on days once they shot worse than they did on Saturday.
However, as they’ve all yr, the Crimson Storm discovered a technique to win.
“It’s always better to learn from winning than learn from losing. So we learned a valuable lesson,” Pitino stated. “This helps you. If I go in there and smile, be happy, we’re going to take an ‘L’ somewhere because we didn’t do our job listening defensively. When you don’t do your job defensively, you lose. We have to clean that up and we’ll learn our lesson with a win.”
