St. John’s Rick Pitino wants players to realize they can’t let up

The path to an outright Big East regular season title may be clearer now after ninth-ranked St. John’s took down No. 24 Creighton before a sellout crowd of 19,812 at the Garden on Sunday.

Rick Pitino has something much bigger in mind for the Red Storm, the sort of achievement that only comes in an NCAA Tournament. And the Hall of Fame coach is taking an approach to winning the conference title that is designed precisely with that in mind.

“We could go to DePaul [on Wednesday] and lose and all this hard work [is] down the drain, so that was my message to them: that anybody in this conference could beat anybody,” Pitino said. “Every team in the NCAA Tournament can beat you. You just have to [understand that] and that’s what I’m trying to do: coach them right now for the tournament, that every single game is tournament driven.”

St. John’s got back a huge piece on Sunday with guard Deivon Smith’s surprising return, and then performed the number that we’ve all grown used to seeing this season. The Red Storm had another bad shooting game from both the floor and the free throw line, but managed to overcome it with offensive rebounds (20), points off turnovers (20) and keeping turnovers to a minimum (five). And the nation’s second-ranked defense held the Creighton to 18 points in the final 14:51 of a 79-73 victory.

The win gave St. John’s (22-4, 13-2 Big East) a two-game lead in the conference with five games to play, including three against the bottom three in the standings.

The Red Storm’s resurgent season, in which they are winning at a rate not seen since long before the current players were born, has clearly captured the imagination of New Yorkers. Sunday’s sellout follows a 19,000-plus turnout for their win over then-No. 11 Marquette last week. And the players feel what’s come together around them.

“It feels good going around being noticed because of the way we play and what we’re doing as a team,” said Kadary Richmond, a Brooklyn native.

“[It’s what] you could dream of as a little kid: playing in the world’s most famous arena, packed house, and you have everybody there to support you,” Zuby Ejiofor said.

Again and again, Pitino has marveled at how the Storm overcomes their frailties. After shooting 38% from the floor, missing 12 three-pointers and clanking 12 free throws, he said those numbers suggest “you’re losing by double digits.”

“I’ve never seen these type of statistics and this much winning ever,” he added. “It defies all statistical logic, but that tells you how good they are with effort.”

Pitino said that this success has happened despite some early season issues inside the locker room — one involving Smith and another involving Simeon Wilcher — that people will see in the next episode of the Vice TV docuseries about the program’s season. And that while getting past that to reach their lofty place is an accomplishment, they can achieve so much more if they don’t lose the focus that’s brought them here.

“It takes time to build a team and, even with the injuries, this team never wavered with their work ethic,” Pitino said. “But they’re getting it now. They’ve arrived. The Garden is packed. They’re playing great. But. . . we could go in and lose to DePaul. You see [our] numbers [so] it’s very easy to do.”

Entering Sunday, the Storm ranked 355th of 363 Division I teams in three-point shooting and 258th in free-throw shooting. And after capping a 10-game winning streak with a pair of wins over nationally-ranked teams, it didn’t find its focus on defense quickly enough and lost Wednesday night to a Villanova team that made a number of shots as the shot clock expired.

It was a hairpin turn with Smith being declared out for the game on Friday and then proving to Pitino he was ready to play following a workout on Saturday. He looked close to the form he had before his Jan. 11 shoulder injury and Pitino said “without him we don’t win this game.”

As last-place Seton Hall proved on Saturday night with a stunning 69-68 overtime win over Connecticut, where it trailed by seven with 46 seconds left in regulation and by five with a minute left in overtime, any Big East team could be lying in wait for the Storm. And as the first-place team with a national ranking, St. John’s will likely be getting everyone’s best.

That’s exactly what is coming for the Storm in the NCAA Tournament and what Pitino wants them to understand as they pursue the Big East title. Fortunately for them, they have three things that play well in any venue and in any situation: defense, rebounding and effort.

“When you get in the NCAA Tournament . . . you could fail offensively,” he said, “but nothing can stand in your way, mentally, of playing great defense.”