Welcome to the thread for Sunday’s NCAA Tournament game between St. John’s and Kansas, where the winner advances to face 1-seed Duke or 9-seed TCU in the Sweet Sixteen. Please be respectful in the comment section and do not share any illegal streams of the game.
You can follow updates of this game on Rumble in the Garden’s official X account (formerly Twitter) at @rumbleSBN or on Rumble in the Garden’s new Bluesky account at rumbleinthegarden.bsky.social. Make sure to check out our game recap and analysis after the game.
If you want to participate in the comment section but are not familiar with the new SB Nation log-in system, you can check out the link here.
Game information
Who: 5-seed St. John’s Red Storm (29-6) vs. 4-seed Kansas Jayhawks (24-10)
When: Sunday, March 22, 2026, 5:15 p.m.
Where: Viejas Arena, San Diego, California
TV: CBS
Radio:ESPN New York 880 / 1050 and Westwood One
Series History: Kansas leads the all-time series, 9-5. The Jayhawks won their last meeting with the Red Storm on December 3, 2021, at UBS Arena by a score of 95-75. All the way back at the 1952 National Championship, the Jayhawks beat the Johnnies in their only postseason meeting against each other.
KenPom Predicted Score: St. John’s to win, 73-71 (56% chance of St. John’s win)
Injury news
There is no injury news for Sunday’s NCAA Tournament second-round game.
What to watch for
We’re Not in Kansas Anymore: After scheduling St. John’s and Kansas in the same sub-region in the NCAA tournament in back-to-back years, the committee got what they wanted the second time around. Zuby Ejiofor will take on his former school for the first and last time in his college career. Ejiofor committed to the Jayhawks as a four-star recruit out of high school, but he only played 5.1 minutes per game as a freshman. He transferred to play for Rick Pitino ahead of the 2023-24 season, and the rest is history. The Red Storm’s star center has downplayed his history with the Jayhawks throughout the week, but he will certainly play with a chip on his shoulder the size of a boulder on Sunday.
His matchup on Sunday night is one of the toughest he’ll face all season against Flory Bidunga, the Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year. The 6-foot-9 forward averaged 13.3 points per game, a team-best 9.1 rebounds per game, and ranked in the top-five nationally with 2.6 blocks per game. Bidunga served as the anchor of a Jayhawks defense that held opponents to 44.5% shooting inside the arc, the fourth-lowest in the country.
Rock Chalk: Few Red Storm have as much history with Kansas as Dillon Mitchell, who faced them five previous times when he played for Texas and Cincinnati in the Big 12 conference. Mitchell holds a 2-3 record against the Jayhawks, averaging 6.0 points, 5.6 rebounds, and 1.0 steals while shooting 68.2%. Only Villanova (75.0%) and TCU (72.7%) allowed higher career field goal percentages among opponents that Mitchell has met multiple times.
California Dreamin’: Oziyah Sellers is back in his home state of California, although he’s 478 miles south of where he grew up in Hayward around the Bay Area. Sellers was locked in during the first half against Northern Iowa, scoring all 11 of his points and hitting 3-of-7 from three before the break. Before Friday, Sellers played his best basketball on the West Coast this season, shooting 11-of-18 from deep (61.1%) during the Players Era Festival in Las Vegas. The Red Storm needs Sellers to play with the same aggression against a Kansas team that holds opponents to 30.5% shooting beyond the arc.
Hall of Fame Heavyweights: Strangely, Sunday marks the second-ever coaching matchup between Rick Pitino and Bill Self. Back on November 28, 2021, Self’s fourth-ranked Jayhawks controlled all forty minutes against Pitino’s Iona Gaels in a 96-83 win in the ESPN Events Invitational. Both of these legendary head coaches have been snake-bitten in the first weekend of March over the last several years. Besides the 2022 National championship win, the Jayhawks were eliminated before the second weekend in five of their last six NCAA Tournaments. Meanwhile, Rick Pitino hasn’t coached in a Sweet Sixteen since 2015, losing in both of his Round of 32 appearances since then.
Pay Heed: It’s very likely St. John’s hasn’t defended against anyone as talented as Darryn Peterson this season. The future top-five NBA draft pick leads Kansas with 20.1 points per game on 44.3% shooting and 38.2% from three. Any concerns about his availability or commitment were made null and void, as he’s played 30 or more minutes in seven of his last eight games. The one exception was when he came off the bench for 29 minutes in the Jayhawks’ Senior Day blowout of in-state rival Kansas State, as Bill Self started his graduating players.
Peterson wasn’t exactly lighting it up entering the NCAA Tournament. His shooting percentages dipped to 37.8% from the field and 33.3% from deep in his last nine games before Selection Sunday. The super freshman got back on track in Friday’s win over Cal Baptist, scoring a team-high 28 points on 11-of-24 shooting (45.8%) and 4-of-11 from three (36.4%).
The real question is who will primarily defend Peterson in tomorrow’s game? Dillon Mitchell is a strong candidate thanks to his mobility and height advantage over Peterson.
Tre’s Way: Like St. John’s, Kansas is a team that needs more consistency from their backcourt, because they’re hard to stop when its guards are on point. Darryn Peterson is going to find a way to get his points, but he will need some help from Tre White. The well-traveled 6-foot-7 wing is playing at his fourth school in as many years, ranking second on the Jayhawks in both points (13.8 per game) and rebounding (6.7 per game). White hits 45.2% of his shots and 40.9% from three, yet his efficiency often determines how well Kansas does. When White shoots 44% or better, the Jayhawks are 17-2, but when he shoots worse than that, their record is 7-8.
Don’t(Forget About Bryson): Not to be confused with the R&B singer, Bryson Tiller is a heralded freshman big man for the Jayhawks who could be the X-factor. Although he’s offensively raw, the 6-foot-10, 240-pound forward could provide mismatch issues against a St. John’s team that already needs to put bodies on 6-foot-5 Darryn Peterson, 6-foot-7 Tre White, and 6-foot-9 Flory Bidunga. Tiller ranks third on the team with 6.3 rebounds per game and was in the top ten among Big 12 players in blocks per game with 1.3.
It will be interesting to see how Rick Pitino handles his rotations to counter the Jayhawks’ size. The Johnnies have only four forwards in their rotation, and they all must stay out of foul trouble or else Pitino will have to play smaller lineups.
Pregame links
- Zuby Ejiofor wasn’t impressed by his double-double in the win over Northern Iowa, much to Rick Pitino’s enjoyment
- Rick Pitino is going viral for lighting into Lefteris Liotopoulos while St. John’s led by 17 in Friday night’s game
- LIU head coach Rod Strickland, who played under Rick Pitino with the New York Knicks, called the Hall of Famer the “Don Dada of coaching basketball”
- St. John’s will need more than just Zuby Ejiofor to get March Madness run moving — Zach Braziller, New York Post
- Rick Pitino’s rule for a March Madness roster: No kids — Laine Higgins and Robert O’Connell, The Wall Street Journal
- Zuby Ejiofor gives Ian Jackson major boost of confidence after St. John’s basketball win — Kevin Connelly, Storm The Paint
- Pitino, Ejiofor, St. John’s stand in KU’s way as Jayhawks look for second-weekend spot — Henry Greenstein, KUsports.com