St. John's path to NCAA tourney similar to Tech's
St. John’s entered the 2010-11 season with the highest of expectations.
The Red Storm were ranked in the preseason polls for the first time in program history after reaching the second round of the NCAA tournament last year.
The team got off to a hot start and was 12-1 with one non-conference game remaining. But the Red Storm then struggled through a four-game losing streak — something they hadn’t dealt with during their program-best season a year earlier.
St. John’s lost consecutive games against Maryland, Louisville, DePaul and Connecticut. All four are NCAA tournament teams, and three finished the season ranked in the top 20.
But St. John’s found its rhythm after breaking out of the losing streak with a 58-48 road victory at Seton Hall. The Red Storm won eight of their last 12 games.
“It shook our confidence a little bit,” St. John’s coach Kim Barnes Arico said of the losing streak. “It took us time to get back on track. We just realized we’re not a bad team; we just played four great teams at a rough time on the schedule. It’s not always who you play but when you play them.”
That storyline should sound familiar to Texas Tech fans.
The Lady Raiders (22-10), who face St. John’s (21-10) on Saturday in their first NCAA tournament game since 2005, were 13-1 after the non-conference season and bolted out of the gate with three more
wins to open Big 12 Conference action. A six-game swoon followed, during which Tech lost to Oklahoma, Baylor and Texas A&M.
After getting back on track with a dominating win at Colorado, the Lady Raiders returned a different team with a different outlook.
“Just looking at their schedule and seeing what happened, they went through the same rough patch and bounced back tremendously from that,” Barnes Arico said. “They’re completely different now. The confidence means so much to young women.
“Every experience helps you. You evaluate so much more as a coach after a loss than a win. Those losses really helped us look at where we were and look at where we needed to get better and grow from a physical standpoint and a mental one.”
It wasn’t easy for St. John’s to carve out its niche in a conference as strong as the Big East, which is sending nine teams to the NCAA tournament this year.
The Red Storm reached the Women’s National Invitation Tournament in 2008 and 2009 before receiving invitations to the NCAA tournament in back-to-back seasons.
When Barnes Arico took over in 2002, she helmed a team that had just gone 3-24 with an 0-16 mark in the Big East. Three years later the Red Storm won 20 games for the first time in 16 years. The following year St. John’s was back in the NCAA tournament and in the national rankings for the first time in 20 years.
“I knew before I came that the program wasn’t at that top level it wanted to be,” senior guard Sky Lindsay said. “I wanted to be part of a team that I could help bring up and I could help make better. This program has gone so far from when I was in high school to when I came. We’ve made tremendous progress and it’s exciting to be part of that history.”
Now the biggest challenge facing the Red Storm every year, Barnes Arico said, is adjusting to the high expectations and maintaining the success that got it to this point.
When St. John’s made its first NCAA tournament under Barnes Arico in 2006, Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma told her, “It’s easier to get here than stay here.”
“It’s really quite difficult to stay at the top,” Barnes Arico said. “Our program has come so far since I’ve been here and now we’re looked upon as one of the best programs in the country. I think we’re here to stay.”
To comment on this story:
david.just@lubbockonline.com • 766-8736
courtney.linehan@lubbockonline.com • 766-8735