Monday night felt a lot like the preseason: some good, some bad.
There was a terrific opening stretch, and then St. John’s looked like a group still trying to figure itself out.
That was enough to cruise past Monmouth 78-63 to open the season at Carnesecca Arena. But it wasn’t a debut the No. 13 Johnnies are going to remember as a Picasso, either.
“The first 10 minutes of the game was a devastating defensive performance. Then, the rest of the game was not very good by us, especially on defense,” head coach Rick Pitino said. “Offensively, we were stagnant, we stood around a lot, and played as if we had Shaquille O’Neal in the low post instead of creating ball movement, player movement. But the first 10 minutes were great.”
St. John’s (1-0) opened the season with a flurry by scoring 24 of the game’s first 30 points. Monmouth had trouble getting the ball past half court.
Keyshawn Hall was a terror, making his first six shots from the field en route to a game-high 26 points on 9-for-16 shooting.
He made shots from the perimeter, scored on the interior and was a perfect 7-for-7 from the free-throw line. Before the opening tip, Hall watched St. John’s hang its Big East regular-season and postseason title banners.
“Me and [associate coach Steve Masiello] joke about when I played [them] last year and how much they still won and I didn’t win,” Hall said with a smile, recalling Auburn’s victory over St. John’s last November. “That was the main thing in my recruitment: just win. I definitely want to be a part of that this year, have a Final Four run. I had a talk with Coach Pitino and told him I want to get to the Final Four as much as he does.”
Ian Jackson scored 13 second-half points after being limited in the opening half by foul trouble. Quinn Ellis did a little bit of everything, finishing with eight points, seven assists, five steals and five rebounds. Tounde Yessoufou had 12 off the bench.
The Hawks, though, outscored St. John’s by three over the final 30-plus minutes. Their methodical offense gave the Red Storm trouble. Pitino’s team wasn’t able to really pull away until Jackson hit back-to-back 3-pointers with 6:29 left that extended the lead to 19.
St. John’s finished with 15 assists, but five came in the early going. They got stagnant.
“We started off great. Then, it became really sloppy,” Ellis said. “We’re really inconsistent right now. We have good spurts, but then also really bad spurts on both ends of the floor. On offense, we don’t really move the ball. On defense, we’re not connected, we’re not helping one another. We just have to get way more consistent.”
Monmouth, it should be noted, nearly beat Seton Hall in an exhibition game and could be better than its preseason projection of No. 5 in the CAA.
Pitino has warned that there are going to be growing pains. This team wasn’t all together until early September. In the preseason, they had stretches of dominance against Rutgers and Texas but also periods of inconsistency. The same thing happened Monday night.
“I think we [have] got the makings of an outstanding team, but we have to get the mental aspects of the game, not the physical,” Pitino said. “These guys will give me everything they have. But we have to get the mental aspects of it down.”
