The Golden Eagles travel to face the Red Storm for the first time in the season in the wake of a weird loss to UConn.
Marquette Golden Eagles (18-4, 9-2 Big East) at St. John’s Red Storm (19-3, 10-1 Big East)
Date: Tuesday, February 4, 2025
Time: 5:30pm Central
Location: Madison Square Garden, New York, New York
The Stakes: Marquette is looking to shake off Saturday’s home loss against Connecticut and attempting to pull themselves back into a tie with St. John’s atop the Big East standings. St. John’s is, of course, looking to expand their lead over Marquette to two full games in the standings, although if STJ wins, Creighton would still be only one game back until the Bluejays play on Wednesday.
Marquette Stats Leaders
Points: Kam Jones, 19.0 ppg
Rebounds: David Joplin, 5.2 rpg
Assists: Kam Jones, 6.2 apg
St. John’s Stats Leaders
Points: RJ Luis, 17.5 ppg
Rebounds: Zuby Ejiofor, 8.1 rpg
Assists: Kadary Richmond, 4.8 apg
KenPom.com Rankings
Marquette: #19
St. John’s: #16
Game Projection: Marquette has a 38% chance of victory, with a predicted score of 72-68 favoring St. John’s.
So Far This Season: How you think this season is going for St. John’s depends on what you thought St. John’s was going to be this season. Did you think that they were going to be a top 20 team like KenPom’s algorithm did when the Red Storm were at #19 on Opening Night? Then this is kind of going about like you thought it was going to go as STJ is at #16 in KP’s rankings as of Monday morning.rankings Were you more like the AP voters, with the majority of the ballots leaving the Johnnies unranked? Then this is going better than expected, as St. John’s is now up to #12 in the country. It’s also not going perfectly well, as all three of their losses — in overtime against Baylor and against Georgia, both in the Bahamas, and at Creighton on New Year’s Eve — qualify as Quadrant 1 losses, leaving them with a 1-3 record at the moment in the biggest determiner of NCAA tournament seeding.
But still, barring The World’s Stupidest Collapse, head coach Rick Pitino has the Red Storm pointed towards the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2019 and most likely towards their first non-First Four tourney appearance since 2015. The fact that they’re alone in first place in the Big East right now as well as riding what is, on Monday, tied for the sixth longest active winning streak in the country is just icing on the cake for where the Johnnies are headed this year.
Tempo Free Fun: St. John’s has all the makings of a ballclub that is going to give this current right now in the moment iteration of Marquette absolute fits on the court. Even if you throw out the fact that the Red Storm love generating turnovers — #16 in the country in rate per KenPom.com — because MU is terrific at keeping track of the ball, then everything else the Johnnies do on defense is primed to be a problem for the Golden Eagles. They do a solid job pushing you off the three-point line into the teeth of their two-point shooting defense, which is top 10 in the country at the moment. Part of that is because they block shots at an elite clip, with 16.1% of shots getting turned back, and that’s also top 10 in the country. 6’9” Zuby Ejiofor is going to be the primary generator of those blocks in the middle, as he’s just past the top 100 in terms of rate, but Kadary Richmond’s no slouch for a guard/wing with a rate rank in the top 400 per KenPom. STJ is a little bit shaky on the defensive glass, but 1) Marquette’s shakier on the offensive glass and 2) I suspect that the high block rate is working a tiny bit against the Red Storm on the rebounding front. After all, according to the rule book, whoever grabs the ball after a blocked shot is credited with a rebound, and it’s hard to end up with the ball after you get the rejection.
On the other end of the floor, yes, St. John’s does have a notable flaw as an offensive basketball team. Yes, they’re a really bad three-point shooting team. Deivion Smith is about the only one on the roster that you could trust to shoot a three-pointer at a 38.9% shooting percentage this season, but 1) he missed three of the four games before coming off the bench to play 28 minutes last time out against Providence and 2) The 6’0” Utah transfer is only shooting 30% against Big East foes.
St. John’s knows they have a problem there. That’s why they’re bottom 20 in the country in terms of attempt rate from behind the arc. Remember that old Patrick Ewing clip? “Do you practice that shot? When?” Well, even if they are practicing it, they aren’t good at it, so the Johnnies turn to other options. Here’s the problem for Marquette: The two things that STJ does instead are giant blinking red light flaws with the Golden Eagles. Being #6 in the country in turnover rate is hiding MU also being #254 in the country at two-point defense. The Red Storm aren’t an elite shooting outfit inside the arc either, but they’re better at scoring it inside than MU is at defending, so advantage to the home team in this game.
The other they’re they’re doing to make up for not being so hot at shooting the ball from anywhere is getting offensive rebounds at an elite rate. St. John’s stands at #16 in the country in offensive rebounding rate, pulling in 37% of their own misses. They’re a little bit down from that number in league play, but still the best offensive rebounding team in the Big East. Ejiofor rears his head here as well, ranking #43 in the country at scooping up his teammates’ missed shots.
The good news out of all of this is that it’s unlikely that Marquette lets St. John’s splash threes at the same clip that UConn did on Saturday. The Huskies converted 63% of 19 attempts — one of the 10 worst three-point defenses in the KenPom.com era, so that’s statistically unlikely to happen again anyway — and the Johnnies have just three games this season where they did better than 39%….. and one of them was the loss to Baylor and none of them are against Big East squads. What really got Marquette into trouble was UConn hitting 57% of their two-pointers as well, and that’s a thing that St. John’s is absolutely capable of recreating if the Golden Eagles aren’t properly causing problems on the defensive end. Even if they do cause some missed shots, the Red Storm want to get that second chance real bad, and so Marquette has to find a way to both stop a quality shot from going in the air but also making sure you’re putting a body on a body in red and white while the shot’s in the air, too.
There’s also the general “Marquette’s gotta stop being weird” thing, too. MU lost to UConn not really because of the hot shooting per se, but because they fell behind by 22 points. Same with the loss to Xavier, except that was a 19 point margin at one point. Trailed Butler at the half. Trailed DePaul at the half and had to rally to avoid losing and then got dragged to overtime. Gave up a 23-3 first half run to Georgetown. You get the point. At some point, Marquette has to buckle up and play 40 straight solid minutes of basketball. Like I said earlier, St. John’s seems designed to be a problem for Marquette this year. The last thing that you need to do against a team that looks like a problem for you is dig yourself a hole in the first half.
Marquette Last 10 Games: 8-2, with Saturday’s loss to UConn snapping a three game winning streak.
St. John’s Last 10 Games: 9-1 and riding an eight game winning streak.
All-Time Series: Marquette leads, 29-16
Current Streak: Marquette has won six straight against St. John’s after taking the season sweep last season, and the Golden Eagles have won nine of the last 11 encounters.
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