Kansas State basketball coach Jerome Tang on facing Rick Pitino
Kansas State basketball coach Jerome Tang talks about matching wits with St. John’s hall of fame coach Rick Pitino in the Big 12/Big East Battle.
K-State Athletics
Kansas State basketball will face its first true road test on Saturday morning with a trip to Queens, New York, to face St. John’s in this year’s edition of the Big 12/Big East Battle at Carnesecca Arena.
The Wildcats are 6-2 after breaking the school scoring record at home last Sunday in a 120-73 blowout of Arkansas-Pine Bluff at Bramlage Coliseum. Before that, they went 2-1 at the Paradise Jam in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, capped by an 80-64 third-place victory over Longwood.
St. John’s also is 6-2 and coming off a 77-64 victory over Harvard last Saturday at home. The Red Storm has yet to play a road game, but did go 1-2 in the Baha Mar Hoops Championship in Nassau, Bahamas, falling in double overtime to Baylor (99-98), beating Virginia (80-55) and then losing to Georgia (63-66).
K-State is 1-3 all time in the Big 12/Big East Battle series but snapped a three-game losing streak last year with a 72-71 overtime victory over Villanova.
Here are three things to know, plus a prediction, for Saturday’s game.
Kansas State basketball and St. John’s have limited history
K-State and St. John’s have not seen much of each other in the past and not at all in the 21st century.
They split the only two previous meetings, back in the 1960s, with both games taking place in the state of Kansas. The Wildcats won 63-50 in Manhattan on Dec. 16, 1961, while St. John’s took a neutral-court decision, 72-65, on Dec. 10, 1965, in Lawrence.
K-State is 26-27 all time against Big East opponents but went 2-0 last year with victories over Providence and Villanova.
A closer look at the St. John’s Red Storm
St. John’s is led by hall of fame coach Rick Pitino in his second season. The Red Storm average 82.1 points per game on 47.7% shooting and allows an average of 66.6 points with opponents shooting 39.4%.
Junior wing RJ Luis, a 6-foot-7 transfer from Massachusetts, leads the team in scoring with 17.6 points per game, and 6-9 former Kansas forward Zuby Ejiofor adds 11.8 points and is tied with Luis for the rebounding lead at 6.8.
K-State starting to round into form
Third-year K-State coach Jerome Tang has preached patience as he breaks in an almost entirely new roster, and the Wildcats appear to be coming along slowly but surely.
Since a disappointing 76-65 home loss to LSU on Nov. 14, they have won four of five, with the lone setback a 67-65 decision against eventual champion Liberty in the Paradise Jam semifinals.
That includes double-digit victories over George Washington (83-71) and Longwood in the Virgin Islands and then a complete-game effort against a badly overmatched UAPB team. The encouraging sign in the Pine Bluff game was the fact that they suffered never let the Golden Lions off the mat after landing an early haymaker.
Prediction: St. John’s 77, Kansas State 72
K-State may be starting to jell, but beating a battle-tested team on the road that already has played Baylor and Georgia close with double-digit victories over New Mexico and Virginia could be a tall order.
Arne Green is based in Salina and covers Kansas State University sports for the Gannett network. He can be reached at agreen@gannett.com or on X (formerly Twitter) at @arnegreen.
