LAS VEGAS
The saying is that what happens here stays here, but that is not the kind of week St. John’s is looking for in the three games it will play in the loaded 18-team Players Era Festival, which begins on Monday.
The 14th-ranked Red Storm are hoping for a performance they can shout about from the rooftops that will reverberate all the way until Selection Sunday.
If St. John’s flies east hoping no one hears about what happened in Vegas, it means things went badly. Very, very badly.
It’s still the first month of the college basketball season and we probably are three months away from the phrase “NCAA Tournament resume” being uttered daily, but a tournament like this is where such things start taking shape.
Red Storm coach Rick Pitino called the field “a who’s who” of college basketball, and it would be hard to argue. St. John’s is one of nine teams in the field that are nationally ranked. Four others are receiving votes.
The Red Storm will open against No. 16 Iowa State at Michelob Ultra Arena at 4:30 p.m. ET and play Baylor on Tuesday at the same time. There will be a third game — likely against another formidable foe — but St. John’s won’t know the opponent until Tuesday’s nine games are completed.
Zuby Ejiofor isn’t one to look beyond the game in front of him, but he clearly understands the potential dividends St. John’s can reap from a big week.
“Iowa State’s a ranked team [and] Baylor is pretty up there as well,” he said Sunday. “So each and every game that we play in here and [win] is going to help us, especially with that resume that you’re talking about . . . in the long run.”
The Red Storm missed out on recording one of those enduring signature wins on Nov. 8 when they lost at the Garden to Alabama, which also is in the Players Era Festival field. But the consensus for Pitino and the players is that experience is going to serve them here.
Looking at the coming week, Pitino said the Alabama game will help St. John’s “a lot.”
“Obviously, we would have liked to come away with a win against Alabama,” he added, “but I know what we had to work on from that game and it’s a good thing.”
“When you play high-level talent, it teaches you a lot,” Ejiofor said. “I feel like that game taught us a lot about ourselves and showed us exactly what our weaknesses were — especially on defense — and something that we needed to work on.”
He added that addressing the weaknesses could “turn those into strengths in these coming games.”
These Players Era games could take on extra significance because at the moment, it’s hard to judge whether the Big East is strong or weak or how much weight those games will hold in metrics the NCAA Tournament selection committee uses. Four of the 11 teams currently rank in the bottom 60 for non-conference strength of schedule, according to Kenpom.com.
No. 3 UConn and St. John’s are strong. Creighton should be, too, despite losing Jackson McAndrew for the season to a foot injury. Butler, Providence, Georgetown and Villanova have played some good games but are still taking shape. Marquette appears to have fallen off substantially.
Regardless of how the rest of the conference shapes up in the weeks ahead, St. John’s can really do itself some good the next few days.
Games like the ones coming up have brought out the best in Ejiofor. He was awesome against the Crimson Tide with 27 points, 10 rebounds, three assists and two blocked shots. But in the subsequent two games — wins over William & Mary and Bucknell — he didn’t look like himself. He scored a total of 16 points and attempted only 12 shots.
“Things weren’t really flowing the way it usually does for me, so that’s something I’m working toward and I’m trying to improve in these next few games,” he said. “I did a terrible job in reading the defense and how they were playing me. I didn’t play up to my standards, and that was on me.”
Pitino seems confident that everyone will see the vintage Ejiofor this week.
“Zuby,” he said, “I never doubt for a minute.”
THE PLAYERS ERA FESTIVAL
There are 18 teams in two pools as follows:
MUA POOL (Games at Michelob Ultra Arena): St. John’s, Creighton, Iowa State, Baylor, Michigan, San Diego State, Auburn and Oregon.
GGA POOL (Games at MGM Grand Garden Arena): Alabama, Gonzaga, Tennessee, Rutgers, Syracuse, Kansas, Notre Dame, Houston UNLV and Maryland.
FORMAT
Monday and Tuesday each team has predetermined games within its pool.
Standings in each pool are then determined by record. The first tiebreaker is head to head, followed by point differential, points scored, points allowed then AP ranking as of No. 24.
Wednesday and Thursday there is a championship game between the two pool winners, a third-place game between the two pool runners-up and seven consolation games with no cross over contests.
Possibilities for St. John’s Wednesday (or Thursday), all times ET
Championship Game (two first-place pool finishers), 9:30 p.m.
Third-place game: (two second-place finishers), 7 p.m.
MUA third place vs. MUA fourth place, 8 p.m.
MUA fifth place vs. MUA sixth place, 10 p.m.
MUA seventh place vs. MUA eighth place, Thursday at 4:30 p.m.
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.