St. John's Red Storm Mike Vaccaro St. John’s is the type of March Madness lottery-ticket team you shouldn’t take for granted By Mike Vaccaro Published March 11, 2026, 6:16 p.m. ET St. John's Red Storm forward Dillon Mitchell #1 reacts after he goes up for a shot and scores drawing a foul by Butler Bulldogs guard Evan Haywood #1 during the second half. Charles Wenzelberg / New York Post Look, here’s the thing: These bursts of prosperity are fleeting and fickle, and they are neither promised nor guaranteed in the new world of college basketball. You don’t always get a team good enough to dream legitimate dreams. You can always talk yourself into anything, sure: That’s what sports is at its essence. We are called fans — short for fanatics — for a reason.
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But sky-high and pie-eye rarely yield anything real. Real is reserved for teams with talent and with coaching, teams that have endured difficult times and learned from them, teams that get better, not worse, as the calendar keeps flipping, December to January, February to March. And maybe all the way to April.
You get one of those lottery-ticket teams, you want to ride it as long as you can.
St. John’s is that kind of lottery-ticket team. Starting Thursday, the Johnnies get to prove it, get to maybe play three more games at the Garden with a coronation waiting on the other side of Saturday. Starting Thursday, high noon at Madison Square Garden, they get after the final-exam phase of a season that has included ballyhoo and bust and every bus stop in between.
