Rick Pitino was right.
The extra spotlight Saturday didn’t bother Kadary Richmond, even as Seton Hall fans inside Prudential Center booed him every time he touched the ball against his former team.
Signs from the Pirates student section taunted Richmond.
They tempted the stoic guard and dared him to lose his composure with a hostile backdrop that inevitably followed his decision to bolt to the Johnnies from the Pirates.
By the time the second half arrived, though, the boos had mostly faded.
Richmond still dribbled the ball, still scored, still did everything required to finish with a stat line of 12 points, six assists and five rebounds.
The jeers returned when Seton Hall made a brief run, but at that point, St. John’s had already constructed a lead that topped 20.
The Johnnies were already in position to cruise to a fifth consecutive win — and an 11th across their past 12 games — with their dominant 79-51 victory and move into sole possession of first place in the Big East after Xavier upset No. 7 Marquette earlier Saturday.
RJ Luis led St. John’s with 24 points and eight rebounds. Zuby Ejiofor finished with 15 points and nine rebounds despite early foul trouble keeping him on the bench for a chunk of the first half.
So on a night bookmarked well ahead of time as Richmond’s return to face his former team, St. John’s turned the showdown into an all-around clinic.
The Johnnies have strung together some of their best basketball of the season since the calendar flipped to 2025.
They even got point guard and engine Deivon Smith back — albeit with mixed results — after he missed Tuesday’s game with a bruised right shoulder.
Everything has started to click at the right time for St. John’s, and its climb up the conference standings finally reached the top.
A top 25 ranking could follow Monday.
It didn’t take long for the Johnnies to take control Saturday, with Seton Hall starting 1-for-21 and finishing the first half just 13.3 percent from the field.
Richmond converted a pair of early baskets to make it 11-1. St. John’s was efficient with its 3-pointers again — the latest step toward neutralizing a glaring early-season weakness.
CHECK OUT THE LATEST BIG EAST STANDINGS AND ST. JOHN’S STATS
And its suffocating defense, which paired 12 steals with nine blocks and 19 forced turnovers, didn’t provide any room for the Pirates to generate a response en route to a 23-point halftime lead.
When Chaunce Jenkins hit a 3-pointer with 6:40 left in the first half, it was just the second made shot for Seton Hall.
The Pirates’ shooting improved across the final 20 minutes and even trimmed the Johnnies’ lead to 15 near the midway point, but consecutive turnovers by Prince Aligbe and Garwey Dual allowed that to quickly balloon back to 20.
After the first one, coach Shaheen Holloway threw his hands into the air as Luis lobbed the ball to Smith in transition, Smith returned an alley-oop back across the paint and Luis finished the dunk.
“Let’s go Johnnies” chants even broke out inside The Rock.
So Richmond aced perhaps his most difficult test of the year.
The Johnnies keep passing their conference tests, too. This was the vision they bought into when hiring Pitino after the 2023 NCAA Tournament.
This was the Year 2 jump that the 72-year-old coach’s track record suggested they’d make. To the upper tier of the conference.
To the NCAA Tournament field — and not just the conversation. To relevance in the national conversation that has evaded the program since its glory days.
And at least for one Saturday night in the middle of January, in the heart of the college basketball season, inside a venue where they’d previously gone 1-12 against Seton Hall, with that Feb. 4 showdown against Marquette at the Garden now looming larger than ever, the Johnnies went back to Queens as Kings of the Big East.
