Now, the rest of the Big East know St. John’s is coming

It is one thing to prepare for this St. John’s basketball team from afar, to watch video of its games and look for tendencies and statistical trends. Facing it on the court is a very different thing.

The eight Big East opponents the Red Storm had faced before Wednesday found out just that . There’s examining how they defend and then there’s the experience of being defended to the teeth by them. There’s watching them relentlessly crash the backboards and then there’s the reality of trying to fight them off. There’s hearing opposing coach after opposing coach remark about how hard St. John’s plays and then there’s trying to compete against it.

Well, the Red Storm lost one tiny edge in the four days preceding Wednesday night’s clash with Xavier at Madison Square Garden: the element of surprise.

On Saturday they grabbed a piece of first place in the conference standings and on Monday they were anointed the 20th-ranked team in the nation in the AP Top 25 poll. And with Wednesday night’s game against the Musketeers, they entered a phase of the schedule where they will be going against teams that already have seen their best and defining qualities firsthand.

It had a profound impact on the Musketeers after St. John’s beat them by 10 points in Cincinnati on Jan. 7. Xavier coach Sean Miller isn’t prone to exaggeration and said afterward, “If you want to talk about a hard-playing, tough-minded group, I don’t know if there is a team in the country that embodies those qualities better than them.”

Xavier was picked to finish third in a preseason poll of Big East coaches and had played in five Quad I games before St. John’s arrived at Cintas Center, yet the players’ experience in facing the Storm made them look in the mirror.

Zach Freemantle, in an interview with FOX broadcaster John Fanta posted on social media, said that a players-only meeting was held after the St. John’s loss where he and fellow veterans Jerome Hunter and Ryan Conwell delivered the following message: “This isn’t what Xavier basketball is. We’ve got to play way harder. We got to be gritty, not pretty.”

The Musketeers won their next three including Saturday’s stunner at No. 10 Marquette.

And asked about the re-match with the Red Storm, he replied “They bullied us. We’ve just got to show . . . you’re not going to come and punk us like that. We took it once. We’re not going to take it again.”

That was clear from the way Xavier played in the first 20 minutes en route to a 10-point halftime lead Wednesday. It defended the Storm tough, gave up no fast-break points and were  even with them on the backboards.

When St. John’s held a workout Monday at the Garden after the Knicks game, coach Rick Pitino sounded more than aware that teams would be ready to try to match the intensity that’s become a Storm trademark.

“They were picked third for a reason in our conference, and we got them on the offensive glass,” he said referring to St. John’s remarkable 20 offensive rebounds in the teams’ first meeting. “We know how Sean Miller is. They’re going to be blocking out from the moment that game ended to now . . . We realize that we got them on a given night, but if we don’t bring it a second night, they’ll beat us.”

“I’ve seen that they’re a lot more aggressive, especially on the defensive end,” Zuby Ejiofor said of the Musketeers. “Their will to win is a lot stronger now and we just have to come out the more aggressive team.”

The challenge St. John’s was facing with Xavier – defeating a team that’s already had the Red Strom experience and lost – is what it’s going to be like for the rest of the month and through much of the rest of the season. St. John plays Jan. 28 at Georgetown – two weeks after it beat the Hoyas by five at the Garden – and on Feb. 1 hosts Providence – who it beat by two points on the road in a wild game in late December.

Pitino is a Hall of Fame coach for a reason and knows that the Storm cannot play the exact same game it did against any previous opponent.

“Every single day, you have to add things because the people I coach against in a every single game are just as good as us,” Pitino said earlier this month. “If it’s not broken and you’re winning, you must break it because they’re going to see what you’re doing well. And if you don’t break it and innovate and get creative and give them things that the opposition doesn’t know, the game will come down to a last-second shot.”