Excuse the pun, but the St. John’s basketball team is outright storming into March Madness following an epic buzzer-beating win in their final regular season game of the year.
Rick Pitino’s Red Storm was in the Fiserv Forum to take on No. 20 Marquette today. The Golden Eagles boast the second-best overall record in the Big East and represent a major preview of what they may face in the NCAA Tournament.
Despite having beaten Marquette in the regular season at Madison Square Garden, Shaka Smart’s team came to play, keeping the game exceptionally close all the way to the end of regulation and forcing overtime.
The game was tied 84-84 with three seconds remaining. RJ Luis Jr. missed a 24-foot shot from the top of the arc that Marquette’s Chase Ross scoop up in a rebound. But Simeon Wilcher stole the ball from Ross, passed it to Zuby Ejiofor who got the layup inside the paint for the game-winning bucket as time expired.
The Red Storm ran onto the court at Marquette, Wisconsin to celebrate the big win.
ST JOHNS (+145 ML) WINS IT IN OT IN INSANE FASHION 🤯 pic.twitter.com/LXnPV2NqCj
— br_betting (@br_betting) March 8, 2025
St. John’s finishes the 2024-25 regular season with a 27-4 record and heads into the Big East Tournament as the top seed. They now get to rest up for the next five days until the Big East quarterfinals against either the No. 8 or No. 9 seed, which will either be Butler or Providence.
As for Marquette, they finish 22-9 and will be seeded somewhere in the top five, which will ensure they get a break through to the quarterfinals as well.
Both teams are going to reach the NCAA Tournament as an at-large team regardless of whether they win their conference tournament.
Porter Binks/Getty Images
Both teams showed today that they can be extremely dangerous in March. They’re exceptionally well-coached to boot.
Marquette head coach Shaka Smart led the Golden Eagles to the Sweet Sixteen last year and even took VCU to the Final Four back in the day.
As for Pitino, his resume speaks for itself (warts and all) having taken five teams to the NCAA Tournament and three to the Final Four.
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