Nobody in Queens saw any of this coming when Rick Pitino walked through the door at St. John’s in 2023. Now the Red Storm are back in the Big Dance for the second straight year as Big East regular season and tournament champions, carrying more momentum into March than just about any team left in the bracket. Friday night in San Diego against Northern Iowa is supposed to be straightforward. But basketball, especially in March, has a habit of making straightforward feel dishonest.
Zuby Ejiofor Is the Best Player Most of America Has Not Watched All Season
The Big East Player of the Year averaged 16.3 points and 7.1 rebounds across 34 games, and in St. John’s final five contests he scored 18 or more points in every single one. He is the engine of everything the Red Storm do well. Ejiofor, who didn’t leave Kansas because of Joel Embiid, despite what Mike Francesa said, bullies defenses in the paint, draws fouls at a high rate, and punishes any team that tries to contain him with a single body.
Northern Iowa is ranked 24th nationally in adjusted defensive rating, which sounds impressive until you consider those numbers were built almost exclusively against Missouri Valley Conference competition. UNI’s frontcourt is about to find out exactly why Ejiofor’s reputation is deserved.
Rick Pitino’s Big East Sweep and Why St. John’s Deserve More Than a 5-Seed
The February 25th loss to UConn in Hartford was genuinely ugly. 20 percent shooting from the field, 17 straight minutes without a field goal, and a 32-point beatdown that had people ready to write postseason eulogies.
Then St. John’s won six straight, including a 20-point demolition of those same UConn Huskies in the Big East Tournament final at Madison Square Garden. That kind of recovery does not happen by accident. That is a team that knows exactly who it is and refused to let one catastrophic night define an entire season.
Pitino has assembled something in Queens that has not existed there in a generation. Back-to-back Big East regular season titles. Back-to-back conference tournament championships. A 28-6 record with 19 wins in the last 20 games.
The argument about a No. 5 seed is worth having separately, but the bracket is the bracket. What matters for Friday is whether this team has the firepower to push into the second weekend for the first time under Pitino.
Ben Jacobson’s Northern Iowa Defense Is Legitimately Elite but the Offense Is the Problem
The Panthers are not here to make up the numbers. When UNI’s full rotation was healthy, the team ranked inside the top 20 nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency. Trey Campbell and Leon Bond III both earned MVC All-Defensive Team honors, and the starting lineup runs 6-foot-4 or taller at every position.
The Panthers finished top five nationally in opponent three-point percentage and held opponents to 59, 52, 69, and 69 points across four straight wins at Arch Madness. That defensive identity is real and it will make things uncomfortable for St. John’s on certain possessions.
The problem is the other end. UNI is 153rd in offensive rating and winless against top-100 competition all year. Everything runs through first-shot half-court execution, which works in the Missouri Valley and starts to crack against elite defensive pressure. But here is where the total conversation gets interesting. St. John’s does not score in the 60s. Their season average sits north of 73 points, and even against a legitimately good defense, the Red Storm have the personnel to force their way to that number.
UNI’s offense is limited enough that one side of the ledger is going to look like a normal Big East game and the other is going to look like a Missouri Valley grind. That combination still clears 132 more often than not.
St. John’s vs Northern Iowa Picks, Best Bet, and Predictions for March 20
The top betting sites have St. John’s installed as a 10.5-point favorite with the total set at 132. The moneyline sits at -600 for the Red Storm and +450 for Northern Iowa.
Running 10,000 simulations across both teams’ scoring profiles and pace tendencies, the over hits in approximately 58.5 percent of scenarios, with the average projected combined score landing around 135 points. That is a meaningful edge over the 132 line, and it reflects something the pace narrative obscures: St. John’s scores too many points for one side of this total to stay quiet.
On the spread, the simulations project an average margin just under 11 points, which lands right on top of -10.5. ESPN’s BPI projection of 10.8 points tells an identical story. When the model and the market are separated by a fraction of a point, the edge is too thin to chase.
Northern Iowa +10.5 is defensible given the historical tendency of 12-seeds to cover, and the half-point at exactly the projected margin is not nothing. But there is no strong conviction either way on the side.
The clearest value on the board is Over 132. St. John’s is not a team that scores in the mid-60s against any defense, and UNI’s offense, limited as it is, still averages enough to get the combined total over a number that was likely set with the slow-pace narrative baked in a little too aggressively.
The sims backed it in nearly six out of ten scenarios. The average projected score backed it by three-plus points. When the model and the logic are pointing in the same direction, that is when you listen to the numbers rather than the storyline.
St. John’s vs. NIU Best Bet: Over 132 @ -110
