QUEENS, N.Y. (Nov. 5, 2019) – The St. John’s men’s basketball team will kick off the 2019-20 season, the 113th in its history, on Wednesday night when it hosts Mercer at 6:30 p.m. inside Carnesecca Arena.

The Red Storm will play its first regular season game under the direction of Mike Anderson, who was named the 21st head coach in program history on April 19. Anderson comes to Queens with nearly four decades of coaching experience on his resume, including 17 seasons as the head man at Arkansas, UAB and Missouri. In those 17 years at the helm, Anderson has compiled a record of 369-200, reaching the postseason on 12 occasions, including nine trips of the NCAA Tournament. His teams have advanced in the Big Dance in six of those instances, including an appearance in the Elite Eight with Missouri in 2009.

Anderson has never suffered a losing season and is one of only four Division I head coaches with more than 15 years of experience that can make that claim. The others are Mark Few, Tom Izzo and Roy Williams.

Prior to taking over as the head coach of UAB for the 2002-03 campaign, Anderson spent 17 seasons on the staff of his former head coach and mentor, Hall of Famer Nolan Richardson. While on Richardson’s staff at Arkansas, Anderson went to the Final Four three times, including the 1994 national championship.

On the floor, St. John’s will be led by a pair of upperclassmen that played a pivotal role in the program reaching its 29th NCAA Tournament a year ago. Mustapha Heron and LJ Figueroa, both of whom were recently named to the Preseason All-BIG EAST Second Team, ranked second and third, respectively, on the squad in scoring in 2018-19, averaging 14.6 and 14.4 points per outing. Figueroa also led the team in rebounding, pulling down 6.4 boards per contest to finish 10th in the conference in that category. The junior wing from Lawrence, Mass., recorded a team-best six double-doubles, including a 22-point, 12-rebound effort in a win over No. 13 Villanova at Madison Square Garden and a 19-point, 10-rebound showing against Arizona State in the NCAA Tournament.

Heron and Figueroa, both of whom gained international experience at this summer’s Pan American Games in Peru, were also named to preseason watch lists recognizing the top talents at their position nationwide. Heron found a spot on the preseason watch list for the Jerry West Award, which honors the top shooting guard in college basketball, for the third straight year. Figueroa was tabbed among 20 candidates for the Julius Erving Award, which identifies the nation’s best small forward. Both of those awards are presented by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

Heron and Figueroa are two of six returners from last year’s squad. Three freshmen, Josh Roberts, Greg Williams Jr. and Marcellus Earlington, will look to makes leaps forward after playing in reserve roles a season ago. Justin Cole, a local product out of Archbishop Molloy, will be the lone Johnnie suiting up for the fourth consecutive season in red and white.

Five newcomers are set to make their St. John’s debuts on Wednesday evening. David Caraher, the 2018 Southland Conference Freshman of the Year at Houston Baptist, will be eligible to step on the floor for the first time in game action after redshirting a year ago. Upperclassmen Nick Rutherford and Damien Sears will both carry Division I experience into their first games as a member of the Red Storm, as will graduate student Thomas O’Connell. O’Connell’s experience is of a different pedigree; however, as the Long Island native will be making his collegiate basketball debut after playing four years of lacrosse at The University of Maryland that included a national championship in 2017. The lone freshman in the lineup on Wednesday will be Julian Champagnie, a talented scoring threat from Brooklyn’s Bishop Loughlin that will look to make an immediate impact at the alma mater of his father, Ranford Champagnie, who won a national championship with the Red Storm men’s soccer team in 1996. John McGriff, another freshman, will be sidelined after undergoing shoulder surgery last month.

Mercer returns three of its top four scorers from a season ago, a campaign that saw the Bears go 11-20. Ross Cummings, a senior guard from Dickson, Tenn., averaged a team-best 17.4 points per game in 2018-19. He shot 39.9 percent from deep, converting on 101 of his 253 attempts from beyond the arc. He ranked in the top 50 nationally in both 3-pointers made a three-point field goal percentage.

The Bears went 6-12 in league play to finish tied for sixth in the final SoCon standings in 2018-19 before falling to Furman in their opening game of the conference tournament.

Mercer played one exhibition game before the start of the 2019-20 season, defeating NAIA St. Andrew’s University by a score of 86-55. Fifth-year senior Ethan Stair, who finished second on the team in scoring a year ago with 11.7 points per game, poured in 23 points and collected 11 boards against the Knights.

Wednesday night’s match-up with Mercer will be the first of five straight home games in Queens to kick off the season for St. John’s.