Rick Pitino has warned that this is going to be a work in progress, and nothing he saw in Wednesday night’s exhibition opener changed his mind.
St. John’s got a late start — the entire roster wasn’t together until the beginning of the fall semester. Transfers Keyshawn Hall and Reed Bailey didn’t commit to join the program until the end of August.
“I really love our upside. We’re just so far behind on the fundamentals,” Pitino said following an 81-52 rout of Drexel inside Carnesecca Arena. “But the upside is you rather have outstanding talent that needs to learn how to play, than little talent that’s fundamentally sound. We have a lot of improvement to make, but I was impressed with how hard they played defensively, and did a lot of good things. We’re about three weeks to a month behind, because we had such a bad summer.”
Two major issues in this game: defensive rebounding and turnovers. Drexel had 14 offensive rebounds and St. John’s committed 19 turnovers.
“If I had one disappointment tonight it was rebounding,” Pitino said. “We played very good defense, surprisingly good defense, and we gave them offensive rebounds. We got to rebound the ball much better to go against Rutgers and Texas. That’s going to be the biggest point of emphasis.”
Of all the newcomers, Bailey has mostly flown under the radar. On Wednesday he was difficult to ignore. The Indiana transfer was the first big man off the bench and produced eight points, five rebounds and three steals in 14 minutes. Pitino mostly liked that Bailey didn’t force shots and moved well without the ball.
“Reed Bailey really understands how to play,” Pitino said. “Reed’s a tough basketball player. He’s invaluable.”
Pitino started Tounde Yessoufou and Babacar Sane and brought Keyshawn Hall off the bench. He plans to rotate those three in the starting lineup, with Quinn Ellis, Ian Jackson and Ruben Prey as the mainstays.
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