I think we have had this feeling before. It was just last season that we played #6 Big East Champion Marquette twice in March, losing by two points in the regular season and then going to overtime in the Big East Tournament and losing by 2 again. Earlier that season we went on the road against eventual National Champion UConn and beat them by double digits. The season before we had an 18 point second half lead against Big East Champion #8 Villanova (a team that eventually went to the Final four) before the refs hammered us and we wound up with a gut-wrenching one point Big East Tournament loss.
The problem is that we have been on the wrong side of these competitive, but losing efforts far more than we have been on the winning side for quite a while. For all of us who are looking for progress with St. John's there are a few benchmarks that would show true progress.
The first was to get off to a good start in conference play. We achieved that by winning four of our first five conference games. However, that accomplishment has been made to seem moot, because we lost six of our next eight Conference games.
The second is to have a run in the Big East tournament. It has been well more than two decades since we made it beyond the Big East quarter-finals. Doing that would be an indicator of the culture change we have been coveting.
The third is to get into the body of the NCAA tournament (First four does not count IMHO) and win a game to get to the round of 32. This has not been done by us since the turn of this century.
I believe that the third is obviously the most important of the three benchmarks and we all hope it will happen this season.
Despite our recent slump, whether we achieve benchmarks two and three has yet to be determined. If we can do these two things, I believe this will confirm the optimism that has been expressed here about the Pitino regime.
Pitino must be aware that these things are the most important accomplishments his team has to do, to be deemed successful. I am confident that he will do everything in his power to make it happen. Until we see how this all plays out, I would hesitate to make any definitive judgments about the success of the 2023-2024 season.