St. John’s has experienced considerable recent success at Madison Square Garden and coach Rick Pitino wants his team to play there as often as possible.
The 13th-ranked Red Storm (1-0) play the first of 13 regular-season games at the fabled New York City venue Sunday afternoon when they host Iona (2-0).
St. John’s won exhibition games over Rutgers and Texas at the home of the NBA champion New York Knicks and will play three non-conference games and all 10 Big East games there.
The Red Storm are 25-2 at MSG in the past two seasons and 30-6 in Pitino’s first three seasons. His fourth began with an uneven 78-63 win over Monmouth on Monday.
“The first 10 minutes of the game was a devastating defensive performance,” Pitino said. “Then the rest of the game, not very good by us either, especially on defense and offensively we were stagnant.”
“You start off great and then it became sloppy,” St. John’s point guard Quinn Ellis said. “I think we’re really inconsistent right now. I think we have good spurts but then also really bad spurts on both ends of the floor.”
Pitino was pleased with the stellar debut of Keyshawn Hall. The Auburn transfer made his first six shots en route to 26 points and nine rebounds.
“They all want to score, but only Keyshawn understands how to score the right way,” Pitino said Wednesday. “Keyshawn’s a bucket getter, and he wants to score, but he understands help defense.”
The Red Storm hope Tounde Yessoufou is past his minor calf injury that kept him out of two practices ahead of the season opener. The Baylor transfer did not start and had 12 points in his debut.
Ian Jackson started and likely will again after scoring 13 of his 15 points in the second half. Ruben Prey started at center and scored two, so Pitino is expected to give 6-foot-11 freshman center Theo Edema his first minutes after he impressed during exhibition games.
“He’s going to be in the (rotation) forever now,” Pitino said of Edema.
Iona is playing St. John’s at MSG for the second straight season. The Gaels took a 91-64 loss there on Dec. 13 and went 18-14 in coach Dan Geriot’s first season.
Iona was picked fourth in the Metro’s preseason poll and is coming off wins over Vermont and NJIT. After beating the Catamounts on Monday on a game-winning layup by Kevon Vanderhorst, Iona dominated its 72-49 win over the Highlanders on Thursday thanks to a 28-0 run in the first half.
“We’re trying to figure out where to attack, how to attack,” Geriot said. “It was big for us to have some different movement opportunities, have some different actions. We’re able to still have the decision making that we always kind of evaluate, so to me, that’s something I was very happy with right now.”
Vanderhorst is averaging 18.5 points and Kosy Akametu is averaging 13.0. The Gaels also feature former St. John’s forward Sadiku Ibine Ayo who had 10 points Thursday.
“He’ll get a warm reception (Sunday),” Pitino said of Ibine Ayo. “We’re looking forward to seeing him.”
Pitino coached at Iona for three seasons, compiling a 64-22 record from 2020-23 with two trips to the NCAA Tournament.
