March Madness: St. John’s finally runs out of thunder

PROVIDENCE, R.I.

Inevitably, these ending are always awful.

St. John’s spent an entire season defying things that seemed inevitable and winning. On one night, it might have been devastatingly bad three-point shooting. On another it might have been missing more than a dozen free throws. On a third, it might be falling into an early double-digit deficit.

And still they kept winning, leaving  coach Rick Pitino so impressed with the team’s resourcefulness and will to win.

But that didn’t happen against a long and athletic Arkansas team on Saturday. The second-seeded Red Storm missed 20 of 22 three-point attempts, failed to make nine of their 31 free throws and ended up with what happens to most teams when things like that happen.

St. John’s lost to the No. 10 Razorbacks, 75-66, in a West Region second-round game at Amica Mutual Pavilion and ended up heartbroken.

“They outplayed us,” Pitino said. “They deserve to move on and we don’t. That’s what March Madness is all about. No matter how good a regular season you have, you play this way, you’re going to get beat.”

Zuby Ejiofor was brilliant, scoring 23 points, shooting 7-for-12 from the floor and 9-for-11 from the free-throw line, and adding 12 rebounds and two steals. Still, it wasn’t enough.

The ending was awful in so many ways.

Kadary Richmond had a sensational final season after transferring from Seton Hall, but the punctuation mark on it was being limited to 16 minutes by foul trouble and picking up his fifth with 6:28 left in the game and the Red Storm trailing by four. He finished with five points and shot 2-for-7.

But maybe the hardest thing to digest about the defeat was RJ Luis Jr. He had nine points — his lowest total since the calendar flipped to 2025 — and shot 3-for-17, including 0-for-3 on three-point attempts.

The final straw for Pitino might have been when Luis missed a three-pointer in traffic instead of finding an open Simeon Wilcher. He opted to take him out shortly after that — with 4:56 left to play and St. John’s trailing by two — and go the rest of the way without the Big East Player of the Year.

Pitino was asked several times about going down the stretch without Luis.

The first time, he replied, “He played 30 minutes — that’s a long time . . . I played other people.”

The second time he was asked about Luis, he praised the way Richmond, Aaron Scott and Deivon Smith played and said, “I’m very thankful to the guys who gave me every single thing they had. I hate to see them go out this way.”

The third time, he answered, “You know he was 3-for-17. You know he was 0-for-3. So you’re answering our own — I’m not going to knock one of my players.”

Luis was exceptional in the last 20 games before  Saturday. He averaged 20.0 points and 8.1 rebounds and shot 38% from three-point range. And his disappointment was obvious.

“I let my teammates down,” he said. “I should have been more of a leader. That’s on me.”

Asked about Pitino’s decision to sit him down the stretch, he replied, “Everyone wants to play when it comes down to [the end]. Not to be able to be on the court the last couple minutes to help my team win, it hurt me.”

During St. John’s run to its first Big East Tournament championship in 25 years, several coaches remarked about the physicality of play in the Big East and suggested that the conference’s style of play might not get called the same way with officials who are unaccustomed to seeing it. That bore out as St. John’s, the team that plays the most physical style in the Big East, dealt with foul trouble all game. The Red Storm were called for 20 fouls, four fewer than Arkansas.

The last foul on Richmond took place right in front of Big East official Lamas Sampson, but he didn’t whistle it. It was called by one of the officials who works other conferences. Even the CBS broadcast team thought the foul that sidelined one of the Red Storm’s leaders should not have been called.

“It’s a tough way to go out,” Richmond said. “Some tough calls.”

St. John’s certainly had its fans on the edge of their seats in the second half as it thrice cut a 13-point deficit to two points — the last at 66-64 on Ruben Prey’s baseline drive for a dunk with 4:11 left — and twice had a chance to tie the score or take the lead. But a season that featured a program-record-tying 31 wins and four losses by a total of seven points going into Saturday ended with the nine-point loss.

“I’ve had a lot of tough losses and I’ve had a lot of great victories in the NCAA, and it always ends with you hating this moment,” Pitino said. “It always ends that way.”

Always awful.