In most years, Tyrone Grant will attend a game or two.
This winter is different. He can’t pull himself away from St. John’s. The former Johnnies center has been to seven games and plans to be at many more.
“I like watching them,” he told The Post in a phone interview. “I’m a huge fan of Zuby [Ejiofor], I don’t even think he knows how good he can potentially be. I like to watch the team. When they get it going, as just a pure sports fan, it’s exciting to watch, just the enthusiasm, how everybody’s scoring.
“They make defense fun. It’s fun to watch them play.”
It’s not just Red Storm fans who can’t get enough of this group. Alums feel the same way.
The Post spoke to three notable Johnnies — Grant, Marcus Hatten and Tarik Turner — about the current state of the program, which is off to its best start through 20 games at 17-3 since the 1989-90 season.
They were downright giddy about this team’s potential, the intensity and ferocity in which it defends and the buzz this group has generated.
St. John’s is tied atop the Big East standings at 8-1 and is ranked 20th in the country. It hasn’t been that high in a decade. It is projected as a sixth-seed by most bracketologists and has the nation’s fifth-ranked defense in terms of efficiency.
Turner, a Fox Sports analyst who also works on St. John’s radio broadcasts, has to go all the way back to the 1998-99, Elite Eight season when the vibes were this high. After last Wednesday night’s win over Xavier, he was at Penn State waiting for his train home. Almost the entire station was red.
“I hadn’t seen that in a long, long time — like over 10, 12, maybe 15 years,” said the former point guard, who played for St. John’s from 1994-98. “The excitement from the fans, the alumni, has never been higher, and that’s exciting. They want to see us win and they’re seeing it.”
He added, “Random people on the train, in restaurants, everywhere I go, people want to talk about St. John’s.”
A center on the Elite Eight team in 1998-99, Grant sees similarities to his team with this unit.
It is the way these Johnnies guard, their ability to switch at every position and their physicality at both ends of the floor.
Turner loves the perimeter — which features Kadary Richmond, Deivon Smith, Simeon Wilcher and RJ Luis. It is reminiscent to him of the 1998-99 one that included Erick Barkley, Bootsy Thornton, Ron Artest (now Metta World Peace) and Lavor Postell. Turner even thinks this group is better in one area.
“This team is better than that team defensively, because that team didn’t have a rim protector,” Turner said. “This team has Zuby and we average six blocks. Kadary makes up for a lot of mistakes with his length. This team defensively is the best St. John’s team I’ve seen that I can remember.”
One area that Grant would like to see improvement in is on-court leadership.
St. John’s has been a terrific second-half team, a nod to the halftime adjustments coach Rick Pitino frequently makes.
It has outscored the opposition by an average of 9.3 points after intermission. Only Duke, Florida and Tennessee are better in that category. But sometimes it takes too long for the Johnnies to snap out of a funk.
“Nothing against Coach Pitino,” Grant said. “Sometimes he’s not going to be there to save them.”
Asked their favorite player on the team, the three alums all raved about Ejiofor, particularly Grant, a big man himself.
The junior forward has gone from a backup to a star this year — the team leader in rebounds (8.2) and blocks (1.9), and second in scoring (14.6).
He is also second nationally in offensive rebounds (4.5) per game. Turner pointed to forward Aaron Scott as someone he admires because of the dirty work he does.
“He makes all winning plays. He’s super low maintenance. He’s a star in his role,” Turner said. “He’s not our best player. He’s a really, really good glue guy. He does so many little things — loose balls, deflections. I thought his on-ball defense in our last game really stabilized us.”
Turner doesn’t want everyone to forget it’s still January.
A lot can happen between now and March. St. John’s has yet to face the other two ranked teams in the league — No. 10 Marquette and No. 19 Connecticut — and hasn’t reached the midpoint of the conference season.
Of course, it is easy to get carried away, considering how long it has been since this program has achieved this kind of success.
Like the win-starved fan base, alums have been waiting for a season like this.
“It’s a special team in the sense they believe in each other,” said Hatten, the high-scoring guard who led St. John’s to the 2003 NIT crown. “It’s not that they blow you away with talent. They’re blue-collar workers, they fit the New York City mindset, and they are excelling with that.
“It’s everything we’ve wanted. We have seen and endured so many seasons that we thought were going to turn out the way this season is turning out. To actually witness now is a breath of fresh air.”
There is a sense this can get better. Pitino’s teams are known to be at their best late in the season. Last year’s team, for instance, didn’t hit its stride until mid-February. For that reason, the schedule could be working in St. John’s favor — with Marquette, UConn and Creighton coming to the Garden between Feb. 4-16. MSG should be electric for those showdowns.
“They need that one win for the city to go crazy,” Grant said. “You know the city is full of front-runners. They need something big to just go crazy.”
