St. John’s crushes improved DePaul for impressive win in Big East opener

Rick Pitino was right.

The betting line for this game was way off.

St. John’s should’ve been favored by a lot more than the opening line of 14.5 points.

Of course, Pitino felt the spread was well too high, predicting a “flat out war” for the Johnnies in their Big East opener against DePaul on Tuesday night.

His players may have used that as their own personal bulletin board material because they treated DePaul like a low-major that didn’t deserve to share the same Carnesecca Arena court.

The Johnnies shook off their recent slow starts and crushed DePaul, 89-61, to open up league play with a convincing victory.

The Blue Demons, coming off a blowout win over Wichita State, are improved under new coach Chris Holtmann.

It just didn’t look like it against the Johnnies.

St. John’s led by 11 at halftime and scored 17 of the first 21 points after the break to turn this into a laugher.

It was over by the first media timeout of the second half.

An aggressive Kadary Richmond made sure of that, scoring nine of his 18 points in the run.

RJ Luis led St. John’s with 19 points and five rebounds, Simeon Wilcher added 16 points and Zuby Ejiofor followed with 12 points, seven rebounds and four blocks.

Making his first start since a one-game suspension, Deivon Smith continued his impressive play of late with nine points, eight assists, six rebounds and five steals.

It was flat out domination.

St. John’s was plus-12 on the glass, racked up 56 points in the paint and turned 20 DePaul turnovers into 27 points.

Most impressive was the Johnnies’ 3-point defense.

The Blue Demons entered one of the best 3-point shooting teams in the country at a shade over 40 percent and St. John’s was 234th nationally defending the 3-point arc.

It held DePaul to 30 percent (6 of 20) from distance.