St. John’s continues its late-season push for the NCAA Tournament with a Tuesday night showdown against struggling DePaul in Chicago.
The Red Storm are looking to finish their sweep of the last-place Blue Demons after beating DePaul 85-57 on Feb. 6.
St. John’s (17-12, 9-9 Big East) aims to keep building winning momentum, entering Tuesday with a three-game winning streak after a rough stretch in Big East play where the Red Storm lost eight of 10 games from mid-January through mid-February.
The Blue Demons (3-26, 0-18) remain winless in conference play.
The Red Storm are fresh off an 82-59 win over Butler last Wednesday. It was their largest margin of victory on the road this season.
“We’ve become a total team,” St. John’s coach Rick Pitino said. “In the beginning, it was Joel (Soriano) and (Daniss Jenkins). Now, it’s Jordan (Dingle), (Chris) Ledlum, Glenn (Taylor Jr.), guys coming off the bench — we’ve become a total team. Offense was brilliant, we tried to continue to score. I want them to keep scoring and play the defense they did.”
During the Red Storm’s three-game winning streak, they have had three or more players scoring in double figures, with a different leading scorer in each game.
Against Butler, Taylor logged a season-high 17 points on 6-of-8 shooting. He averages 4.5 points per game.
Meanwhile, DePaul is enduring its worst season since joining the Big East in 2005.
The Blue Demons enter Tuesday’s contest with a 17-game losing streak. They have yet to win a game in 2024, with their last victory coming against Chicago State on Dec. 30.
“For me and the rest of the team, it’s just going in there and playing as hard as possible, like Coach (Matt) Brady has been telling us,” DePaul sophomore Jaden Henley said of the team’s mentality for the final two games of the regular season. “Just staying with it. We still believe we can get us a win, so we’re going to keep playing.”
DePaul lost its 18 Big East contests by an average of 23.8 points per game.
Outside of Georgetown — where both meetings were decided by three or fewer points — DePaul has lost by double figures against all other conference opponents.
–Field Level Media