Despite a brutal finish, this St. John’s dream season could be the start of something bigger

Everything is in place to ensure that the Red Storm can replicate their massive success from the 2024-25 season and go much farther next March

Saturday’s season-ending loss to Arkansas is going to sting for a while. More than seventy-two hours later, St. John’s fans are still lamenting RJ Luis, Jr. getting benched late and not having the chance to redeem himself from a nightmarish performance, the ridiculously soft call that ended Kadary Richmond’s college basketball career with 6:28 left in the second half, and the Red Storm’s offensive outing grizzly enough that the mere mention of the team’s shooting percentage, 28 percent, will elicit a flood of dreadful memories of this game for years to come.

Besides wins and losses, there are apparent anxieties that Saturday’s loss also stands as a missed opportunity to catch even more momentum for what was a magic carpet ride of a 2024-25 season — to generate enough enthusiasm not just with their ride-or-die fans who stuck through the last quarter-century of futility, but to convince even more Johnny-curious supporters (or “subway fans,” as Rick Pitino has referred to them these last two years) who jumped on the bandwagon in the few months to stay onboard for next season and beyond.

Was this season all for nothing after the Red Storm were knocked out in the first weekend of the tournament?

To anyone who isn’t a fatal pessimist, that answer is no. In a vacuum, losing as a 2-seed to a 10-seed in the first weekend is a disappointment, but this St. John’s team blew all preseason expectations out of the water and the program is set up for more success in the future under a tireless Hall of Fame head coach and a mega-buck donor funding the program hand over fist.

The Big East’s coaches picked the Red Storm to finish fifth in the conference in October. St. John’s tied a conference record of 18 Big East wins, then took home the regular season and tournament titles for the first time in 40 years.

St. John’s went unranked in the AP Top 25 preseason poll. They rocketed to as high as fifth, their best ranking in over thirty years, and remained in the polls for the last nine weeks.

A team led by an unheralded wing who battled recurring injuries a season ago, an undersized center in his first full season as a starter, and a band of mercenary transfers who probably needed name tags during summer workouts came together, dominated the Big East, went undefeated at home, and won 31 games.

The most important achievement from this 2024-25 St. John’s men’s basketball team may be getting long-suffering Red Storm basketball fans to believe again. Madison Square Garden is selling out nightly, and most supporters in attendance aren’t wearing Villanova teal or Connecticut blue but St. John’s red and white. The Red Storm’s Big East Tournament championship felt like a full circle moment as more than 15,000 St. John’s faithful reveled inside an ear-splittingly loud MSG. During the NCAA Tournament, waves of Red Storm fans hit the road and turned Providence’s Amica Mutual Pavilion into Queens North.

Given all of the success from this season, it’s easy to see how St. John’s can ride this wave into next season. All-Big East First Team honorees Zuby Ejiofor and RJ Luis Jr. could return and form one of the best duos in college basketball. Rick Pitino now has tangible proof that he can win big with St. John’s and can pitch this vision to recruits. Mike Repole’s incredible financial support of St. John’s’ NIL war chest guarantees that the Red Storm will be a major player in the transfer portal for another year.

With a vast army of longtime, lapsed, and new-coming fans joining together to turn Madison Square Garden into St. John’s’ home again, a mountain of NIL capital to construct a championship-winning roster, and Rick Pitino steering a program that has transformed from a dinky fishing boat to a fully-operational battleship in less than two years, the 2024-25 season could be the start of another gilded age of St. John’s basketball.