After guiding St. John’s to its best season in four decades, coach Rick Pitino sought a tougher nonconference schedule to better prepare his players for the rigors of conference and postseason games.
One of those games arrives Saturday afternoon when the fifth-ranked Red Storm send out their revamped roster for a visit from No. 15 Alabama in the first of their 12 regular-season games at Madison Square Garden.
The Red Storm won all 12 of their games at MSG last season, including its first Big East tournament championship since 2000. In 2024-25, the Red Storm’s lone nonconference game at MSG was against New Mexico, and the only ranked nonleague opponent they faced was Baylor, which was No. 13 when it beat St. John’s in the Bahamas.
This season, St John’s will play three teams from the SEC: home games vs. Alabama and Ole Miss and a neutral-site game in Atlanta against No. 9 Kentucky. The Red Storm also will face No. 16 Iowa State in an event at Las Vegas.
St. John’s recorded a strong opening to the season at its on-campus arena with a 108-74 rout of Quinnipiac on Monday. The Red Storm posted their highest point total since getting 119 against Mississippi Valley State on Nov. 9, 2021.
Dillon Mitchell led five St. John’s players in double figures by scoring 18 on 7-of-9 shooting. Zuby Ejiofor, the Big East preseason player of the year, added 17 and helped the Red Storm pile up 60 points in the paint.
“The one thing that stood out from an ultra-positive standpoint was our mentality going into the game,” Pitino said. “From when the ball was thrown up to the end, we had an intense, aggressive mindset. We made our mistakes, as you always do in a first game, but overall, I couldn’t be more pleased.
“Now we’re going to play a completely different type of team, one that takes only about eight or nine seconds to shoot every possession, so we’ll need to be ready for that.”
Alabama (1-0) is playing its first game at MSG since facing Duke and Drexel in the 2013-14 NIT season tipoff. The Saturday game starts a nonconference gauntlet for the Crimson Tide, who next will oppose No. 1 Purdue, No. 17 Illinois and No. 21 Gonzaga. Alabama also will meet No. 13 Arizona next month.
The Crimson Tide are hoping Labaron Philon Jr. capably can fill the void left by Mark Sears, who is now playing for the Milwaukee Bucks. Philon averaged 10.6 points as a freshman last season, when Alabama reached the NCAA Tournament’s Elite Eight. He scored a career-high 22 points and added eight assists on Monday in Alabama’s 91-62 rout of visiting North Dakota.
“He’s going to have plenty of games where he’s got eight or more assists,” Alabama coach Nate Oats said about Philon. “He’s going to have plenty of double-doubles. I think if he gives us a little better effort on defense and the rebounding stuff, he could push triple-double here.”
Houston Mallette added 15 points and eight rebounds in the season opener as Alabama was a plus-20 on the boards.
Philon and Mallette may again be playing without some of his supporting cast as starting guards Aden Holloway (wrist) and Latrell Wrightsell Jr. (finger) sat out on Monday due to injuries. Both players are day-to-day.