Rick Pitino knew going up against No. 15 Iowa State in Las Vegas wouldn’t be easy. And he was right. The two teams opened the Players Era Championship with an 83–82 thriller, but it ultimately went in the opponent’s favor. For Pitino, though, the real test came at the postgame press conference.

The frustrations were already boiling over after the loss, especially since the Johnnies dropped a winnable game by a razor-thin margin. So when a reporter questioned Pitino’s late-game timeout management, he lost his cool. He called the inquiry “ridiculous” and insisted the team had already run the play he wanted.

“We had two timeouts, one for injury, and we ran the play that we wanted the time before. We had two timeouts in the last minute, one for an injury and one they called it. That question’s ridiculous, so go to the next one,” he said. And technically, he wasn’t wrong-St. John’s had used two timeouts in the second half: one at the 18.5 mark and another at 13.4.

But the reporter had a fair reason to ask. Milan Momcilovic had driven inside and finished at the rim to regain the lead for Iowa State. After a pair of key defensive stops, Joshua Jefferson added two free throws to pad the Cyclones’ lead with 9.4 seconds left. Yet St. John’s chose not to call a timeout, and the ball ended up with Zuby Ejiofor. 

Dillon Mitchell then converted a meaningless layup as time expired. Naturally, the reporter wanted to know whether those timeouts could’ve been managed differently.

Unfortunately for Pitino, it didn’t end there. In a follow-up question, the same reporter asked whether Dylan Darling fouling out cost St. John’s the game. Pitino dismissed the idea immediately. “As I just told you, it had nothing to do with it. The guards played excellent defense; they didn’t come out with the blocking out on the glass. They got four offensive rebounds with the game on the line; it wasn’t Dylan Darling. It was their ability to come up with that backboard and our inability to come up with the rebound,” he said.

He didn’t just shoot down the premise-he pointed directly to the real reason behind the loss. As one of the winningest coaches in Division I history and a two-time national champion, Pitino’s experience showed in how clearly he diagnosed the game.

St. John’s frontcourt, led by Zuby Ejiofor and Bryce Hopkins, played physically. But Iowa State matched the challenge. As head coach Otzelberger said, “We knew coming in, it was going to be a highly physical game… Felt like at halftime, we really needed to lock in and generate more turnovers off our defense.” And the Cyclones did just that.

Iowa State dominated the late-game exchanges by attacking the glass. They finished with 17 offensive rebounds, leading to 22 second-chance points. That swing was the difference, as the Cyclones narrowly outrebounded St. John’s 38–36. “We had some big offensive rebounds. For us to have 17 offensive rebounds against a team with their physicality… I think those two areas allowed us to get the possessions we needed to be successful,” Otzelberger added.

Iowa State tied the score at 72 with 6:01 left on a putback by Blake Buchanan. Their next three baskets all came on second-chance opportunities. Meanwhile, St. John’s managed just one second-chance basket in the final seven minutes-and that came on a meaningless last-second layup. So yes, as Pitino said, the battle was lost on the glass.

But was that the only setback?

Entering the game, St. John’s averaged 98.5 points per contest, scoring at least 93 in each of its first four games. But against Iowa State, they fell short in nearly every major category. They shot 43% from the field compared to Iowa State’s 44%. They were outperformed from deep-7-for-20 to the Cyclones’ 9-for-22. Even after getting to the free-throw line more often, they struggled with efficiency, shooting 23-for-30.

They even lost the rebounding battle as Iowa State controlled the glass with a 38–36 rebounding edge. They secured more offensive boards, giving them extra possessions St. John’s couldn’t match. Iowa State had their weaknesses too-fewer assists, fewer steals, fewer points off turnovers, and less overall shooting rhythm.

But their second-chance scoring and timely rebounding outweighed everything else. For the Johnnies, expectations are sky-high after a 31–5 finish last season. But this game showed there’s still plenty to analyze and correct. Now the question is simple: Can St. John’s apply these lessons before facing Baylor next?