St. John’s Deivon Smith recalls late Amir Abdur-Rahim as a ‘great guy’

Deivon Smith never played for the late Amir Abdur-Rahim, the South Florida head coach who died at the age of 43 on Oct. 24 due to complications following a medical procedure

But Abdur-Rahim still left a lasting impression on the St. John’s point guard.

“He was a great person. He was a great coach. A lot of people posted about him that day, even from the Atlanta area. He was loved,” Smith said Friday as St. John’s prepared to face Quinnipiac on Saturday at Carnesecca Arena. “He was in a lot of gyms, he recruited a lot of the top talent in Atlanta. … He was a great guy. He was just very optimistic, a cool guy.”

Abdur-Rahim initially recruited Smith when he was an assistant coach at Georgia and Smith was a four-star recruit at Grayson High School (Ga.).

He nearly committed to join his program at South Florida in the spring of 2023, but instead opted for Utah. Abdur-Rahim led the Bulls to a surprising 25-8 record, AAC regular season crown and NIT appearance a year ago.

“I’ve been in the transfer portal a few times now, so he always reached out, helped me navigate which way I should go, or just gave me an honest opinion on [coaches] he knew personally,” Smith said. “Stuff like that, being a great insider for me, always keeping me motivated to stay hungry.”

Coach Rick Pitino gave his team a “C” for its performance against Fordham, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“Generally, first games that I’ve graded out have been D-pluses, so it’s a little bit better than normal,” he said.

One area he would like to see improvement in is St. John’s 3-point defense. Fordham shot 34.8 percent (8 of 23) from distance.

“We have to guard the 3-point line better than we did,” he said. “We’re a decent shooting team. I don’t think that’s our major asset. We’ll have some nights that will be great, but surely we have to stop it, and we didn’t stop it against Fordham, and that was bothersome.”

Pitino and starting center Zuby Ejiofor had a one-on-one film session of his play against Fordham in which he had just five points and one rebound in 21 minutes.

“Zuby was his own worst enemy and that’s why he had a mediocre game,” Pitino said. “He did not run the floor and out-run the other team’s five-men. I said, ‘Zuby, sometimes you give credit to the other team’s defense of why you had an average game. But let’s look at why you had an average game.’ He watched it, he realized it and it won’t happen against Quinnipiac.”