Is the Red Storm defense ready for the Big East?

Starting on Sunday against Wagner, St. John’s has three warm up games before heading into conference play. And in that time, they hope to get Sedee Keita close to back (one would hope before the Seton Hall game) and improve the defense, because right now, St. John’s has the second-worst defense, adjusted for opponent strength, in the Big East.

Taken from Bart Torvik’s site of opponent-normalized and tempo-free stats:

Ideally, a team would find itself in the upper-right quadrant. The diagonals mark the overall efficiency margin by levels, which is to say that a team with a really good offense (farther right on the bottom axis) can get away with having a poorer defense (lower on the left axis).