A week later, Rick Pitino is looking toward the future, and he sees plenty of promise.
“I think we’re just scratching our potential,” the St. John’s coach told The Post in a phone interview. “There’s so much more to do. And there’s so much more potential. But I do think it was a magnificent season, on the court, off the court, everything about it was magical. I use the word magical, because I think that’s what it was.”
That magical season ended prematurely, in a crushing second-round NCAA Tournament loss to Arkansas last Saturday.
A lot has happened in the last week.
The Johnnies landed top guard target Joson Sanon from Arizona State, kept star forward Zuby Ejiofor and lost leading scorer RJ Luis Jr., who is entering his name into the NBA Draft and the transfer portal, according to a source.
Pitino said the focus of the offseason is on improving an offense that was 65th in efficiency while maintaining the physicality and grit that led St. John’s to its first outright Big East regular season title since 1985 and first NCAA Tournament victory in 25 years.
“We looked at our defensive weaknesses the first year,” he said. “This year we will look at the fact we were not a good shooting team and we’ve got to improve that, and we will.”
Pitino later added: “I don’t know if we can improve on 31-5, but we’re certainly going to try.”
Exit meetings began on Saturday, and it doesn’t sound like many players will follow Luis. Ejiofor, an All-Big East first team selection, was the first player to make it known he will be back.
There will still be plenty of roster turnover, with Kadary Richmond, Aaron Scott and Deivon Smith out of eligibility.
St. John’s hosted impact Providence forward Bryce Hopkins on an official visit starting on Saturday.
Pairing the former all-league player with Ejiofor would give the Red Storm a formidable 1-2 frontcourt punch.
Pitino has had some time to think about this past season, and as disappointing as the Arkansas loss was, it doesn’t take away from all the Johnnies accomplished.
“I think this was a dream season,” Pitino said. “Nobody in the beginning of the year — you, me or [university president] Father [Brian] Shanley — nobody would ever have thought we were going to reach those heights: fifth in the nation, winning the regular season, winning the Big East Tournament. In the beginning of the year [if you said] we would get to the Round of 32, would that be good? Everybody would say, ‘Yeah, that’s a great beginning.’
“We played so poorly against Arkansas. There was Kadary playing only 16 minutes [due to foul trouble] and RJ having his worst game of the season, and Aaron Scott and Kadary both playing with torn ligaments in their thumb. Sooner or later we were going to get caught, and we got caught that night.”
