St. John's enjoyed another strong finish under Rick Pitino last season, finishing 30-7 and winning both the Big East regular-season and tournament titles.
The fifth-seeded Red Storm went on their deepest NCAA Tournament run in years, beating Northern Iowa and Kansas to reach the Sweet 16 for the first time since 1999. Their season ended in heartbreaking fashion, though, falling 80-75 to top-seeded Duke.
With St. John's ranked No. 13 in the preseason AP Top 25, expectations are that they'll go on another deep tournament run this year. Their season tips off Monday, Nov. 2 against Monmouth in Queens. However, Pitino recently turned attention back to what NIL has done for the state of college basketball, arguing it's the most competitive the sport has been in decades.
"The great thing about the NIL era is what's taken place between the lines in college basketball, the actual play, away from the courts, away from all the problems we're experiencing, is the best basketball I've seen in 20 years," Pitino said. "Right now, it's no longer Kentucky, or Kansas, or Duke. Illinois is every bit as good as those teams, can win the big ring as well as those teams, because the playing field is now level. They're all professional athletes being paid."
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The NIL era was officially introduced in 2021, when the NCAA adopted an interim policy allowing college athletes to earn money from their name, image, and likeness, without losing their eligibility. That was a breakthrough moment in the sport and followed years of legal challenges, state-level legislation, and growing pressure to let athletes benefit financially from the attention and revenue they've helped bring to their schools.
Since then, NIL deals and the transfer portal have reshaped recruiting and how programs build their rosters. Players can change schools more freely, and programs compete to attract talent through financial opportunities. The House settlement, which took effect in 2025, also opened the door for participating schools to share revenue directly with athletes, pushing college sports further towards a professional model.
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Those changes have helped spread talent across the country, to Pitino's point, creating more competitive teams and therefore better basketball. We saw it last year with teams like Nebraska, Iowa, Alabama, Tennessee, Texas, and Arkansas, none traditional basketball powerhouses, all make it to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament, while Illinois was two games away from a national championship.
That wide level of competition will be tested again this season. Florida enters as the preseason No. 1, followed by Duke and Illinois, with UConn, Arizona, Michigan State, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, and Houston rounding out the top 10.