St. John’s continues to soar with Big East Tournament title

Zuby Ejiofor raised his arms high to the crowd to exhort the cheering throng. Sadiku Ibine Ayo sprinted across the court to hug Spike Lee. Kadary Richmond dribbled out the final seconds but didn’t let the ball go and brought it with him to the handshake line.

These were just a few of the scenes from St. John’s shaking off 25 years of Big East Tournament frustration with an 82-66 win over Creighton for its first championship since 2000.

The sixth-ranked and top-seeded Red Storm followed a familiar script, falling behind early — this time by eight  — and then figuring out a way to win and surging plate for the win.

This particular surge included one of the best stretches of basketball St. John’s has played, a stretch of more than seven minutes when it made 14 straight shots.

The Red Storm, flummoxed much of the first half by Creighton’s 7-1 Ryan Kalkbrenner, found that when they pushed the pace, they could get to the basket before the Bluejays’ defense could set up. That ignited a 32-14 run that brought the Garden to near-painful decibel level.

RJ Luis Jr., Zuby Ejiofor and Kadary Richmond were especially strong down the stretch. Luis scored 27 points in the Red Storm’s 57-point second half after being limited to two points in 10 minutes of the first half by foul trouble. Ejiofor had 13 of his 20 points after the break and Richmond added 10 of his 12 points.

With three wins in three nights, St. John’s —  now a stunning 30-4, with the four losses coming by a total of seven points — may have done enough  to earn a No. 2 seeding when the 68-team field for the NCAA Tournament is announced Sunday evening. The Red Storm seem almost assured of beginning the tournament in the subregional at Amica Pavilion in Providence, Rhode Island. That’s where their first breakthrough of the season occurred when St. John’s rallied from a 15-point deficit for a two-point win on Ejiofor’s buzzer-beater.

St. John’s has a lot of momentum entering March Madness, having won 19 of its last 20 games, and is doing what every team hopes to be doing at this time of year: playing its best basketball of the season. The Red Storm now have the top-rated defense in the country, according to kenpom.com.

St. John’s coach Rick Pitino will be the only coach in college basketball history to have taken six different teams to an NCAA Tournament — he also took Boston University, Providence, Kentucky, Louisville and Iona — and few have had the sort of success he’s enjoyed in the sport’s premier event.

His teams have made appearances in seven Final Fours and won two national championship games.

Like many of the other nationally ranked teams — and, frankly, the other three teams that were in the Big East semifinals on Friday night — St. John’s was assured of a spot in the NCAA field long ago. However Pitino and the Red Storm have changed nothing about their win-at-all-costs approach to every contest.

They had the top seeding for this event in hand when they went to Milwaukee, and Pitino could have given Deivon Smith and his nagging shoulder injury a break. Instead, he had them play at Marquette as if it were an elimination game, and St. John’s pulled out a two-point overtime win on another Ejiofor buzzer-beater.

“We played this game like I told them — I said, ‘You’re one and done. You lose this game [and] the season’s over,’ ” Pitino said afterward. “That’s the way you’ve got to play it to prepare for March Madness. You don’t  just show up in March and say, ‘OK, this is what we’re going to do.’ You prepare for it now. You prepare for it at the Big East Tournament. And they did a fabulous job, just a tough-[expletive] team. Toughness like you can’t believe.”

But there is something else. Every team in the conference wants to win the Big East Tournament championship, but it means much more to St. John’s than everyone else.

Yes, some of that has to do with it being played in their town and at the Garden, where they have drawn huge crowds, but it’s more  about connection to long-suffering Red Storm fans.

The event has been a major disappointment every season since the 1999-2000 team last won the tourney title. When St. John’s made the semifinals a year ago, it was the first time it had gotten that far in 24 years.

The St. John’s team made an appearance at the Applebee’s in Fresh Meadows on Monday to sign autographs and commune with the fans, and the turnout was overwhelming. Not only was virtually every table filled with people donning Red Storm gear, but there was a rope line outside with people queued up to meet the players.

“The city of New York has done a great job of getting behind us and giving us all the support and love that we needed,” Luis said. “It’s really cool to see all those little kids coming up to us and saying, ‘We love you guys — thank you for everything.’ Even the older fans tell us how happy and proud of us they are.

“See, we do it for them,” he added. “So we just [want] to go out there and just keep on winning and make them happy.”

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.