Guard-ed optimism
Pitino confident after additions of Smith, Richmond
Rick Pitino’s last national championship team featured three high-level guards all capable of making plays for themselves and others.
He sees similarities between that Louisville trio of Peyton Siva, Russ Smith and Luke Hancock and the trifecta he now has at St. John’s following the additions of elite lead guard transfers Deivon Smith (Utah) and Kadary Richmond (Seton Hall) to join rising sophomore Simeon Wilcher.
“Russ and Peyton were lightning-quick players who were great basketball players, and these two guys are great basketball players and so is Sim,” the St. John’s coach told The Post. “We have three great basketball players and we have two freshmen who are going to be great down the road in [top 50 recruit] Jaiden Glover and the young man from Greece [Lefteris Liotopoulos].”
The one question that has arisen since the additions of the highly rated transfers is: Who runs the offense?
Pitino’s response: both of them.
Smith and Richmond, ranked as the top transfer to enter the portal by several different outlets, are used to playing with the ball in their hands. Pitino believes they can excel playing off each other, that having two dynamic playmakers will make it easier on the other. Between them, they averaged 12.2 assists last season.
“It’s no different from Peyton
Siva and Russ Smith. We play four out and one in, and they’re guards,” Pitino said. “They’re different, very different. Deivon is a great rebounder like [Heat guard] Terry Rozier from the guard spot. He’s a total dog. He plays his [butt] off. Kadary is a lot different. Kadary is a great, great passer. Deivon is a great passer as well. Kadary is a guy who has unbelievable vision, great size, gets to the foul line, rebounds. I’m super excited to have both of them, as well as Sim. They’re three top-notch guards.”
“They’re guards, everybody plays on the perimeter. If anything, by position, it’s who you’re going to defend. Offensively, they’re all going to run picks-and-rolls, all going to go downhill, all going to run the break. We play a position-less offense.”
Neither
Richmond nor the 6-foot Smith are known as shooters — neither has averaged more than 2.5 3-point attempts in their four-year college careers — but Pitino expects them to set personal highs in that category next season, and believes there is enough shooting on the roster.
Most importantly to him, St. John’s had added a lot of athleticism to join its young core of Wilcher, RJ Luis, Brady Dunlap and Zuby Ejiofor.
It’s a roster Pitino believes matches his uptempo style of pressing, particularly with two lead guards who are strong rebounders and can start the transition game.
Plus, Richmond’s size at 6-6 creates positional versatility that will enable the Johnnies to either go big or small.
“What I wanted more anything else is to have guys who can put the ball on the floor, pass the ball,
score the than ball. Be very quick laterally, as well as up and down the court to push the pace,” Pitino said. “When you have RJ, Sim, Brady and these guys we just added — Zuby is a great runner — we’re just very athletic now and it’s going to be very exciting for the style of play we want to play.” Pitino is thrilled with how the roster is coming together. The Johnnies’ first transfer came in the form of former top-30 recruit Vince Iwuchukwu of USC, five weeks after the portal opened. Then, they beat out Oklahoma, Memphis and Arizona State for Aaron Scott, a quality 3-and-D wing from North Texas.
In the span of 24 hours this week, Smith and Richmond joined the fold, leaving just one open scholarship Pitino plans to use on a power forward who can stretch the floor.
His second St. John’s team is now nearly complete, with a transfer class ranked fourth nationally by 247Sports.com. “I think our staff and [general manager] Matt Abdelmassih did a phenomenal job. We said we’re going to be patient and wait,” Pitino said. “We’re very, very excited and we’re a power forward away from putting together a great roster. Now we are going to play a bigtime schedule next year, so we needed to have a bigtime roster.”