St. John’s Red Storm is among the worst 3-point shooting teams in college right now and that showed again against Shaka Smart’s Golden Eagles. It’s not much of a problem, however.
Coach Rick Pitino’s squad shot 3 out of 16 in the game or 18.8 percent. They still did walk away with the victory.
One of the many reasons behind? Rebounding.
Red Storm out-rebounded the Golden Eagles, 50 against 28. The more impressive part of this number is that 21 of them are from offensive rebound.
Smart has simple explanation why it happened to them – the lack of cooperation.
“I think rebounding is a five-man endeavor,” Smart told reports post-game.
“It’s all five guys. The rebounds they got, it started well before the shot went up.
“I think were were some defensive breakdowns at times that got them in position to rebound and then they did a great job grabbing them. The reality is, on our team, if you line up our guys and you line up their guys and we have a contest to see who can jump the highest to get the rebound, we got two or three guys that can jump high.”
Shaka Smart preaches about old school rebounding
Rebounding haunted the Golden Eagles until the final whistle.
The Red Storm had more fastbreak points, 12 against 8, and more points in the paint, 36 against 28.
They also finished with more field goal attempts.
Smart thinks his players should keep in mind that jumping the highest is not the way to get a rebound. He still believes in old school type of play in getting boards.
That’s what St. John’s did.
“The other way you can rebound is the old-school, put your body on guys, force them out, block out until the ball hits the floor and then go get it,” he said.
“Exaggerating with that, but I thought at times St. John’s was quicker to the ball.”
Marquette will have a chance to get back on track when they face the streaking Creighton Bluejays who are one spot above them in Big East at second spot.
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