NEW YORK — The night before the Big East championship game, Walter Berry, forever known around here as “The Truth,” shouldered through a crowded St. John’s locker room looking for RJ Luis. He needed to tell him something. Towering over reporters and guests of the program, he broke into a huddle of bodies around the St. John’s star and put massive hands upon Luis’ shoulders.
“I am so happy to finally meet you,” Berry said, lowering his voice to add: “Tomorrow, young man, I want you to have this.”
Berry is one of the all-time all-timers. Right up there with Chris Mullin, Mark Jackson and Malik Sealy. Now 60, he carries the perspective of a man who, no matter what, has always been most known for the two seasons he spent at St. John’s. It was the ’80s. It was Lou Carnesecca. It was New York City. Berry’s teams went a combined 62-9 and played in the 1985 Final Four, but one game always felt different than the others — a Big East tournament championship victory at Madison Square Garden over rival Syracuse on a magical, delirious night in March 1986.
Berry knows what it’s like. He knows what it means.
“We will talk again soon,” Berry said, allowing the crowd to consume Luis again.
Here’s betting that conversation will be about what they both understand — that winning at St. John’s is unlike winning anywhere else in college basketball. Oh, you scoff? That only means you were not at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night, or the last few days, or at any point during this ultimate revival season for the long-latent Johnnies. Yes, winning at Duke is incredible. And winning at Kansas vaults you into history. And Kentucky is Kentucky. And so on and so on. But St. John’s is New York, and New York is St. John’s, and when it comes to scale, and scope, and sheer voltage, St. John’s is a different animal than any other in the game.
Late Saturday, after Luis did exactly what Berry might hope he’d do — helped lead the Johnnies to a Big East tournament championship game win over Creighton, 82-66 — the junior tried his damndest to describe a feeling that can only be understood by a few.
“This has been,” Luis began, “by far the most emotional, happiest week of my 22 years of existence.”
Luis wasn’t yet born when St. John’s won its last Big East tournament title. That was 2000, and the feeling was fleeting.
Now? The feeling is impossible joy. The school’s decision two years ago to hire a then 70-year-old Rick Pitino could have been viewed in many ways as an alliance of convenience. The program needed both cultural relevance and a winning product. Pitino, coaching out his final chapters at nearby Iona, needed one more shot at winning big at the highest level, preferably without having to leave New York.
Were the optics — primarily Pitino’s complicated history and the scandals therein — a little tricky to maneuver? Sure. But then they faded, and there was St. John’s, coming off so many years of losing, standing somehow with perhaps the best college coach of this generation, a native son who’s synonymous with both the city and the game, and a master fundraiser at a time when funding NIL is the top priority.
Altogether, the perfect recipe to reclaim attention in a city that doesn’t offer it easily.
“Rick is a New Yorker, through and through, and for him to be able to come back and command the big stage that is New York City, there was no other coach that could pull it off, in my opinion, what Rick pulled off here,” the Rev. Brian J. Shanley, St. John’s president, said amid Saturday night’s postgame bash. “I’m sitting here tonight, I almost want to cry because our fans have been hungering for this for literally 40 years.”
Everything around St. John’s right now can often feel like it’s part of one big bit, but that it’s OK, because everyone is in on it. The program’s biggest booster, billionaire Mike Repole, who grew up in Queens rooting for those legendary ’80s St. John’s teams, is as much of a presence around the program as the actual mascot is. Standing on the same stage where the team received the Big Ten tournament trophy on Saturday night, Repole (maybe?) joked: “It’s just the beginning. I mean, Rick’s gonna sign an 18-year contract tomorrow. Ninety. He’s gonna stop at 90.” Some other program donors, meanwhile, have no actual affiliation with St. John’s. They’re just Pitino’s friends. They want to come along for the ride. Just like everyone else.
The whole city feels the same way, media and fans alike.
On Thursday, referencing a player abstaining from drinking water in observance of Ramadan, Pitino explained that Sadiku Ibine Ayo is receiving IVs to ensure he can play safely. Then Pitino added that he’s asked doctors to put defense in the IV, sending the media room into a fit of laughter. On Friday, after a comeback semifinal win over Marquette, Pitino opened his news conference by saying, “There’s no panic in this stock market,” as reporters chortled, scribbling the line, looking at each other. Did you catch that? At center court on Saturday, interviewed in the arena as falling confetti accumulated on his shoulder, Pitino was asked when he felt like this team could win a championship. “About 10 minutes ago,” he replied, deadpan, before cracking a smile. The still-packed Garden busted in laughter.
This is Pitino in his element, exactly who he was, exactly who he is. He knows St. John’s is occupying the front page of the Daily News, and the Post, and Newsday right now. He’s going to give ’em some material.
And the team fits, too.
It’s not just that St John’s wins; it’s that these Johnnies play with a style and brand that fits the city. Defense and dunks. Violence and toughness. Teams that play hard are the ones that are remembered. This week, Aaron Scott took a shot to the face, drawing blood on Thursday night, then hurt his hand on Friday.
He played 39 minutes on Saturday.
“That’s our identity,” Scott said. “Nothing stops us from playing: injuries, bloody lips, messed-up thumbs, hamstrings, nothing.”
Deivon Smith is playing with an injured shoulder. He has struggled at times, and is clearly limited, but the team needs his reserve minutes in the backcourt. As Pitino put it this week, “He’s a tough kid, but you’ve got to get over the hump mentally, and that’s what he is really struggling with.” Saturday, the Johnnies’ third game in three days, was a serious test of such things. Smith, after struggling in the first half, responded by being on the floor for 13 of the team’s 14 straight made field goals in a seven-minute second-half frenzy that turned the Garden floor into lava and knocked Creighton out of the game.
The noise?
“Never in my life have I heard anything like that,” Smith said. “That kind of energy, man, you just get lost in it. Words can’t explain it.”
It was indeed hard to describe the feeling Saturday night. You had to be there.
Just like Walter Berry knew, and RJ Luis now knows, so, too, does Zuby Ejiofor.
The Kansas transfer came to St. John’s soon after Pitino got the job. He did so to develop. Pitino promised to get everything out of the 6-foot-9 center. He also promised Ejiofor, who was born in Garland, Texas, to Nigerian parents, that if he came to St. John’s, he’d have a chance to feel like the center of the world.
Looking around the Garden late on Saturday, after scoring a combined 53 points in the Johnnies’ semifinal and final wins, Ejiofor could only shake his head.
He swallowed some emotion and said, “You’re talking to a guy who played at Allen Fieldhouse, and that’s probably the only thing that could even compare. But this, man; this is something else. This is New York City. This is MSG. This is different.”
(Photo: Brad Penner / Imagn Images)
