St. John’s and Pitino begin life as a ranked team on this week’s AP Top 25 National Calendar

St. John’s hasn’t played with a national ranking in nearly six years. It’s been even longer since Hall of Famer Rick Pitino coached a featured team The Associated Press men’s college basketball poll.

That changes this week as the 22nd-ranked Red Storm re-enters the poll. This is the first time Pitino has led a ranked team since his time at Louisville. The first game is Wednesday at home against Wagner as part of this week’s AP Top 25 National schedule, followed by a matchup at Madison Square Garden against a New Mexico team coached by his son Richard.

Pitino — who won an NCAA championship at Kentucky in 1996 and a subsequent championship at Louisville in 2013 — is focused on fixing mistakes that put his team behind at halftime against Quinnipiac on the weekend before taking over after halftime.

“This time last year we would have lost this game,” Pitino said after the 96-73 win. “But this team did the right things to win this game. I just hope this team develops into the team we had at the end of last year because right now transition defense and man defense are a big, big weakness.”

Still, St. John’s (2-0) enters the week 22nd in KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency with 115.8 points per 100 possessions, while its defense is 14th with 94.7 points per 100 possessions.

The Red Storm had not been on the rankings since a week at No. 24 in January 2019. And that was one of only ten appearances since 2001 before Monday.

For Pitino, it will be the first time since the final poll of the 2016-17 season that he will soon coach an AP Top 25 team before he was fired from Louisville Afterwards, the school became embroiled in a federal corruption investigation into the sport.

The weekend game at the Garden features a notable matchup, both with the Lobos after beating then-leading UCLA on Friday and the aspect of family reunification.

“You don’t pay attention to the carriage at the other end,” Pitino said. “I’m going to train against my son and I don’t even want to look at him. You just want to be fully focused. He won’t want to look at me. It’s about New Mexico winning and us winning.”

Cramp watch

The annual Champions Classic sees No. 1 Kansas face Michigan State and the nightcap features No. 6 Duke versus No. 19 Kentucky on Tuesday in Atlanta.

The latter game features Blue Devils freshman and preseason Associated Press All-American Cooper Flagg. The 1.90 meter tall striker has shown what he can do an all-round floor game but also had cramps in each of his first two college games.

“We have to help him,” third-year coach Jon Scheyer said after Friday’s win against Army. “I’m not happy about it for him. We have to help him and we will do that. Right after that, I can promise you, I will meet (with team members), I don’t care if it takes all night. The bottom line is we can’t allow this to happen.”

A Final Four meeting that didn’t exist

This week’s list of ranked games is led by a matchup that could have been in last year’s national championship game: Alabama vs. Purdue.

The second-place Crimson Tide visits the 13th-place Boilermakers on Friday night. They met at the start of last season, with Purdue edging Alabama before both reached the Final Four last year from opposite halves of the NCAA. Purdue reached the finals with a lead of against the surprising NC State and Alabama failed in the second semi-final against a UConn team on its way to history as a repeat champion.

Alabama, led by Mark Sears, a preseason AP All-American, enters the week ranked third in KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency (120.5), while Purdue is ninth (118.5).

Roadworks

The Alabama-Purdue game is one of five true road games for ranked teams on Friday night, including No. 9 Arizona, which visits Wisconsin.

The list includes No. 15 Marquette traveling to Maryland, No. 20 Florida taking on in-state opponent Florida State and No. 21 Ohio State visiting No. 23 Texas A&M.

Watchlist

While Illinois and Texas Tech topped the voters’ list of unranked teams, just outside the AP Top 25 is a notable matchup with Wake Forest’s visit to Xavier on Saturday.

Steve Forbes’ Demon Deacons (3-0) are picked to finish third in the Atlantic Coast Conference. But the program hasn’t appeared in the NCAA Tournament since 2017 and hasn’t been ranked since February 2010, leaving Wake Forest alongside Stanford (March 2008), Boston College (January 2009) and Georgia Tech (also February 2010) as ACC teams applies that have not been ranked for more than a decade.

Xavier (2-0) is picked to finish third in the Big East and is one of them the most experienced teams in the country.

The game is the Skip Prosser Classic and was named in honor of the former Wake Forest and Xavier coach, who died of a heart attack in July 2007.

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