Rothstein on Campus for Practice

[Marillac2]

Rothstein:

“Early prediction on St. John's 2024-25 starting five:
Deivon Smith, Kadary Richmond, RJ Luis, Aaron Scott, Zuby Ejiofor”

“St. John's needs 12 and 12 combined at center from Zuby Ejiofor, Vince Iwuchukwu, and Rubin Prey. Ejiofo --- who was backed up Joel Soriano --- last season is also a breakout candidate.”

“Would expect Aaron Scott and RJ Luis to play the bulk of the minutes for St. John's at PF.
Small Ball is coming to Queens.”

They will get 12 and 12 in the first half of most games.

 

[paultzman]

NM

 

[IDRAFT]

Hey I’m as excited as can be. But don’t need to over exaggerate anything for that to be the case. We have two 7’1 guys. One is a freshmen the other has a lot to prove. You say they bring real shot blocking ability now but Joel had a higher block rate than Vince for what it’s worth.

When it’s all said and done, like I said I think we’ll get more than 12 & 12 from the 5 spot and what we have will be good enough to compete for top 25 and tourney noise. But do we really believe if we had Joel coming back fans wouldn’t be talking him up again as a huge piece of our front court? Saying even on his bad days he’s good for 10 and 10. Instead it’s addition by subtraction.

We will see where numbers land but Kadary and Smith rebound at a very high level for guards. That should deflate the rebound numbers for the front court guys, while not illustrating year-over-year accomplishments.

That is to say I think Joel’s individual numbers would take a hit with these guys. I’m a Soriano guy and will believe any of the current guys can duplicate what he did when I see it but I also think this roster is less dependent on center production, and that has a numerical effect.