Rick Pitino made a plea to his players Friday: Let it fly.
Stop worrying about your misses. Ignore the percentages.
When the 3-point shots are there, let them go.
That came after St. John’s attempted a season-low nine 3-pointers — and made two of them — in its frustrating one-point loss at Creighton on New Year’s Eve.
“To be quite honest with you, it defies all the metrics of the game,” the Hall of Fame coach said as the Johnnies prepared to host skidding Butler at Carnesecca Arena on Saturday afternoon. “Winning like we’re winning is very difficult if you’re not getting the easy break of the 3-point shot.”
It was a different tone than Pitino had after the setback, when he said St. John’s (11-3, 2-1) isn’t a good 3-point shooting team.
That likely isn’t going to change.
The Johnnies are 224th nationally in 3-point percentage (32.8), 283rd in made 3s per game (6.6) and 295th in attempts (20.2).
In three league games, they have made a total of eight 3s.
St. John’s can’t be afraid to take them when opportunities present themselves, as Pitino saw too much hesitation from his team against Creighton.
CHECK OUT THE LATEST BIG EAST STANDINGS AND ST. JOHN’S STATS
“What’s bothered me a little bit is guys are counting their misses, counting their percentages and not taking them and they can make them,” he said. “RJ [Luis] being one. RJ is passing up a lot of open 3s. He didn’t do that last year.
“Aaron [Scott] hasn’t had many good looks. Simeon [Wilcher] has to move more to get open 3s and they’re our shooters, basically, until Brady [Dunlap] comes back.”
As a player, Pitino joked that if he missed four straight shots, it would only make him want to take more. In recent days, he has encouraged his players not to overthink it. He has even told Wilcher’s father, Sergio, to hammer home the point to his son, who is St. John’s best 3-point shooter at 40.5 percent but is only averaging 2.6 attempts per game from distance.
“It’s very surprising to me because all the teams I’ve coached loved taking the 3,” Pitino said. “These guys have more confidence in the mid-range than they do the 3. But they have to take them or the mid-range isn’t going to be there. We’ll get there.”
Another issue, which Pitino believes is connected to 3-point shooting, is pace. At its best, St. John’s pushes the ball and gets out in transition. The ball moves. It is ranked 96th in the nation in tempo.
But in the loss to Creighton and large portions of the recent win over Providence, it was too stagnant.
It’s not a coincidence that in St. John’s three worst offensive performances of the year, the losses to Georgia and Creighton and win over Providence, it averaged just eight assists.
It also went 7 of 46 from 3-point range in those contests.
“Our pace throughout the entire [Creighton] game was pretty much about as bad as it gets,” forward Zuby Ejiofor said. “That’s something that we worked on in practice [Thursday]. Just moving the ball a lot quicker than we’ve been doing these past few games.”
The flip side, of course, is St. John’s is still in a good spot despite the recent offensive issues.
It is 2-1 in league play with five of the next eight games at home, where it is undefeated.
Ten of its 11 wins have come by at least 13 points.
Its defense is ranked ninth in the country in efficiency and it is an elite rebounding team featuring the nation’s leader in offensive rebounds per game (4.5) in Ejiofor.
“We’re sort of like a football team that runs the ball a lot, plays great defense and occasionally makes good passes to keep the [opponent] honest,” Pitino said. “That’s who we are right now. The more pace we play with, the better the 3-point shooting will be.
“Right now, as long as we play as hard as we’re playing with our desire to win, we’ll get there. We have a group of fighters. They’ll get it.”