QUEENS, N.Y. (Nov. 7, 2023) – In front of a sold-out Carnesecca Arena crowd, the St. John’s men’s basketball team secured a 90-74 victory over Stony Brook in the program’s first game under Hall of Fame Head Coach Rick Pitino on Tuesday.
Senior center Joel Soriano picked up where he left off a season ago, leading all scorers with 22 points on 9-of-12 shooting to go with 11 rebounds and three blocks. It marked his fifth-straight game with a double-double dating back to last season and his seventh career 20-point performance after recording six in 2022-23. Soriano also put his extended shooting range on display, as the Red Storm’s captain drained both of his 3-point attempts, which were the first triples of his career.
Red Storm graduate transfer Chris Ledlum joined Soriano in the double-double column. The Brooklyn, N.Y., native posted 16 points and fell one rebound shy of tying his career high, finishing with 14 boards in 33 minutes of action. Ledlum was responsible for nine of St. John’s 18 offensive rebounds.
St. John’s guard Daniss Jenkins nearly registered a triple-double in his Red Storm debut, scoring 17 points on 7-of-13 shooting while chipping in eight assists and seven rebounds. Jordan Dingle, who missed both of the team’s exhibition contests due to injury, was the fourth Johnnie to finish with double figures, chipping in 13 points off the bench.
Eleven of the 13 active players for St. John’s got in the scoring column during Tuesday’s season-opening victory over the Seawolves. The Red Storm shot 51.5 percent (34-66 FG) from the floor, 50.0 percent (11-22 3FG) from distance and 91.2 percent (11-12 FT) from the free-throw line The Johnnies also outrebounded the Seawolves, 43-30.
The Red Storm did not trail in the contest and used an 11-2 run early in the first half to build a nine-point cushion. Ledlum sparked the offensive surge with five-straight points before Glenn Taylor Jr. buried a 3-pointer and Dingle completed a three-point play to put St. John’s up 19-10 at 12:36.
St. John’s led by as many as 15, 31-16, in the first half after Dingle hit a 3-pointer and Jenkins knocked down a floater that capped off a 12-2 run with 8:15 to play. After Stony Brook trimmed the deficit to six with 1:29 remaining in the frame, the Red Storm answered with the final five points of the half as Jenkins drained a 3-pointer and then found Ledlum for an alley-oop in transition. St. John’s carried a 41-30 lead into the break.
In the second half, the Red Storm hit three of its first four shots for a 7-0 run that was capped by Sean Conway’s triple to go up 48-33 less than two minutes into the stanza.
Soriano put the Red Storm up by 20 with his first career 3-pointer from the top of the arc at the 13:18 mark. Four minutes later, he knocked down his second triple, which jumpstarted a 7-0 spurt that gave St. John’s a 78-56 advantage.
Stony Brook’s Tyler Stephenson-Moore tried to will the Seawolves back into the contest with eight of his 10 points coming in the second half. Keenan Fitzmorris and Toby Onyekonwu helped cut the Seawolves’ deficit to 14, 87-73, after posting four points apiece on an 8-0 stretch with under three minutes to play. The duo finished with 11 points each, hitting five shots apiece.
Dean Noll led the Seawolves with 15 points on a 6-for-12 mark from the field and a perfect 3-of-3 from the line.
Tuesday’s victory marked the 10th-straight season opening win for the Red Storm. St. John’s also improved to 10-0 all-time versus Stony Brook.
The Red Storm will make its Madison Square Garden debut on Monday, Nov. 13, when it welcomes Michigan to the Big Apple for the Gavitt Tipoff Games. Tip-off is slated for 6:30 p.m., inside “The World’s Most Famous Arena.”
