Roger Rubin: St. John's trouble at center? Rick Pitino has something up his sleeve
St. John's Reed Bailey puts up a shot for a basket against Rutgers during the third overtime of a preseason exhibition men’s basketball game at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 18, 2026. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
There were a couple of big-picture storylines that tracked with St. John’s last season. When the Red Storm stumbled early with four losses in their four highest-profile games, they were the team that didn’t have the necessary elite point guard. When they reeled off 20 wins in 21 games, they were the team with a front court no opponent could keep up with.
A team that has high expectations struggles? Everyone notices what’s missing. A team that has high expectations surges? Everyone notices the strengths. That’s the nature of the game.
St. John’s coach Rick Pitino ultimately found a way to negate the weakness. He put the ball in forward Dillon Mitchell’s hands and developed Dylan Darling into a serviceable part-time point guard. That’s the nature of Pitino, to find the workaround.
No. 13 St. John’s will play No. 7 Texas at the Garden on Sunday in its final exhibition game, and one doesn’t have to listen too hard to hear the whispers that the Red Storm might have an issue at the center position.
Returning junior Ruben Prey is the 6-10 starter and plays hard on defense but might not be strong enough yet for the physicality. Texas 7-footer Matas Vokietaitis, who averaged 15.6 points and 7.1 rebounds and shot 62% last season, will be a challenge for him.
Reed Bailey, the 6-10 Indiana transfer, played well against Rutgers when Prey was limited by fouls but is envisioned as a big off the bench.
When the point guard position was a problem last season, there was chatter about the ones the Red Storm recruited and failed to land: Xaivian Lee went to Florida, Silas Demary Jr. to UConn and Acaden Lewis to Villanova. Are we about to get the same kind of dialogue about the centers Pitino & Co. didn’t land in Massamba Diop, now at Gonzaga, and Moustapha Thaim, now at Michigan?
Maybe not.
Pitino already may have found the workaround by going hard to one of his cornerstone philosophies. St. John’s has a functioning full-court press months ahead of last season’s team, and that might be the solution to any issues at center if they arise.
Red Storm opponents may have trouble running plays for their centers if their offenses never get a chance to really set up. A great St. John’s press could do that.
Pitino may have hinted at this very thing when he was asked about the expectations for Prey on Sunday and replied, “Ruben can’t guard their center. He’s too big. We’ve got to do it with team defense. We’ve got to do it with good pressure on the basketball.”
For anyone who has watched Pitino over the decades of his Hall of Fame career, they know that he loves full-court pressure and that it has been behind many of his greatest successes. The press creates turnovers and wears the opponent out. Could this be part of the 2026-27 Red Storm identity?
There is one “X-Factor” in the questions about the St. John’s center position if Prey isn’t the solution: freshman Theo Edema, who is 6-11 and a chiseled 255 pounds.
“He’s a high school senior, he passed up his high school senior year, so he’s not going to be ready,” Pitino said. “But physically, he’s ready. He tries really, really hard . . . He gets tired really, really quick, [and] that’s the sign of a college freshman. So for a three- or four-minute period, I think [he] can go in and get the job done physically.”
Pitino did well in addressing shortcomings each of the previous two seasons — the lack of an elite point guard last season and the anemic shooting the season before.
So there is little reason to believe he doesn’t already have something in mind if the center position proves to be another.
UBS memories
The Islanders’ home, UBS Arena, approached St. John’s about relocating one or more of its games this season, but it didn’t come together. A source told Newsday that the games wouldn’t have been siphoned off the portfolio of contests at the Garden, but offers like that have to be considered for the revenue-sharing dollars it would bring in.
The Red Storm played in the venue’s debut event against nationally ranked Kansas, a 20-point loss in the 2021-22 season, and three more games there in 2023-24 with an average attendance of 7,702.
The game on Feb. 18, 2024 — a six-point loss to Seton Hall — is best remembered for Pitino’s postgame news conference in which he critiqued several players for having poor “lateral quickness,” berated on-campus Carnesecca Arena as [crappy] and called the season “the most unenjoyable season of my lifetime.”
The Red Storm won their next six games before a five-point loss to eventual national champion Connecticut in a Big East Tournament semifinal.
Storm hosting top recruit
St. John’s this weekend is hosting highly sought 6-7 forward Malachi Jordan of Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) Prolific Prep. He already has visited Alabama, Tennessee, Kansas and Southern Cal and reportedly has a number of offers, including one from UConn. Pitino has favored older players for the Red Storm but said he could recruit three high-schoolers for next season . . . Reed Bailey is one of a dozen athletes from the sports of men’s and women’s basketball and track and field who sued the NCAA to get a fifth year of eligibility after the 2022 high school graduating class was excluded from the new “5-in-5’’ rule. They received a temporary injunction last week and Bailey is cleared to play the entire 2026-27 season. The NCAA is expected to appeal.
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
