No. 22/20 St. John’s to Open BIG EAST Play with DePaul on Tuesday

Tuesday, December 16

Queens, N.Y. (Carnesecca Arena)

7 p.m.

St. John's University

DePaul

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Kelvin Odih tallied two points, two rebounds, a block and a steal in just 7:38 of action.

No. 22/20 St. John’s to Open BIG EAST Play with DePaul on Tuesday

12/15/2025 2:55:00 PM | Men's Basketball

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The Red Storm men’s basketball team and Blue Demons will tip off at 7 p.m. in Queens on Peacock

QUEENS, N.Y. – The St. John's men's basketball team will kick off the BIG EAST portion of its schedule on Tuesday in Queens, welcoming the DePaul Blue Demons for a 7 p.m. tip inside Carnesecca Arena.

The game will air live on Peacock with John Fanta and Tarik Turner on the call. Fans can listen to John Minko and Brandon Tierney narrate the action on 1050 AM ESPN New York. An audio stream of the game can also be found on the ESPN New York app, the Varsity Network app, TuneIn, Sirius XM 83, the SiriusXM app, and the St. John's Red Storm app.

Tickets are sold out to the general public, St. John's students can claim a very limited number of tickets by clicking here.

St. John's held steady at no. 22 in Monday's release of the Associated Press Top 25 and rose one spot to no. 20 in the USA TODAY Coaches Poll. This week marks the 17^th straight that St. John's has appeared in the AP Top 25, the longest such streak for the program since an 18-week stretch from Nov. 1998 to Nov. 1999. The 17-week stretch is tied for the fifth longest in St. John's history.

The Red Storm (6-3) will kick off its 47^th season of BIG EAST play on Tuesday night in Queens. The Johnnies are 23-23 all-time in BIG EAST openers and have won four in a row dating back to the 2021-22 season.

Tuesday will mark the Red Storm's penultimate game of the year at Carnesecca Arena, where the Johnnies are 17-0 under the tutelage of Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame Head Coach Rick Pitino. The Red Storm boasts a 25.2-point average margin of victory in those 17 games and have won by fewer than 13 points just once. St. John's 17-game winning streak in Queens is tied for the fifth longest in the 64-year history of the building and the longest since the Red Storm rattled off 27 straight between 1997 and 2001.

The opener against DePaul (8-3) will be the Red Storm's only BIG EAST game of the season in Queens, as the Johnnies will play nine of their 10 league contests at The World's Most Famous Arena. The Red Storm also played three non-league contests at The Mecca. The program's 12 regular season games at MSG are the most since 1951-52.

After scoring a team-high 19 points in the Red Storm's win over Iona on Saturday at The Mecca, Oziyah Sellers earned his first BIG EAST Weekly Honor Roll nod of the season. The senior from Hayward, Calif., went 4-of-7 from beyond the arc, his fourth game of the campaign making at least three triples.

Sellers led six Johnnies in double figures against the Gaels, as Ian Jackson added 14, Joson Sanon and Bryce Hopkins chipped in 13 apiece and Dillon Mitchell and Lefteris Liotopoulos each finished with 10. The only St. John's starter not to finish in double figures, Zuby Ejiofor, affected the contest in plenty of other ways, pulling down a season-high 10 rebounds and matching a career high with eight blocks. Having also tallied eight rejections against Ole Miss the week prior, Ejiofor became the first Division player since November of 2021 (Obinni Anochili-Killen, Marshall) and just the second since the start of the 2014-15 season to swat eight or more shots in back-to-back games. Ejiofor joined Chris Obekpa as the only players in St. John's history to log consecutive outings with eight or more blocks.

DePaul comes to Queens with an overall record of 8-3 following a Saturday win at Wichita State. Two of the Blue Demons' three losses have come against high major foes with the third coming against a Buffalo team that sits at 9-2.

Senior guard CJ Gunn leads the team in scoring at 14.2 points per game. In the Blue Demons' most recent outing against the Shockers, Gunn scored a team-high 18 points in 30 minutes of action thanks to a 4-of-7 showing from beyond the arc. Junior guard Layden Blocker averages 11.9 points and a team-high 3.5 assists per game while senior forward NJ Benson is averaging 11.3 points on a blistering 72.6% shooting while pulling down a team-best 6.5 boards per outing.

St. John's and DePaul will meet for the 58^th time in a series that dates back to 1932. The Johnnies own a 35-22 all-time edge against the Blue Demons, including a 25-11 advantage in BIG EAST regular season play. St. John's has won seven straight against the Blue Demons, including the last four by an average margin of 26.8 points.