Creighton is too much for Storm

OMAHA, Neb. — Marcus Foster scored 25 points with five 3-pointers, Martin Krampelj added 14 points with 11 rebounds, and Creighton rallied to beat St. John’s, 78-71, on Wednesday night for the Red Storm’s third straight loss.

Krampelj scored 10 points in a 16-2 run and Creighton rallied from a seven-point halftime deficit to a 62-58 lead on Foster’s 3 with 8:08 left to play. The Red Storm closed to 66-65 on Bashir Ahmed’s jumper with 5:15 to go, but Ronnie Harrell Jr. and Khyri Thomas hit consecutive 3s for a 76-71 lead with 14 seconds left before Harrell iced it with two free throws.

Thomas scored 17 points with five assists and Harrell had 13 points with eight rebounds for the Bluejays (12-3, 2-1 Big East).

St. John’s led 43-36 at halftime after making eight 3s and shooting 50 percent from the floor behind 12 points apiece from Tariq Owens and Ahmed.

Ahmed finished with 21 points with four 3-pointers for the Red Storm (10-5, 0-3). Owens and Justin Simon scored 14 apiece and Shamorie Ponds added 12 with five assists and five steals.

SOUTHERN SWING NIXED

New York doesn’t play ball with states that legalize discrimination.

The Stony Brook baseball team will not travel to play Southern Miss this season because of a mean-spirited Mississippi law that allows businesses and municipalities to refuse service to gay couples.

Three games scheduled to take place in February have been scrapped under the 2016 executive order issued by Gov. Cuomo that bans all non-essential state travel to places that pass such laws. The order is most closely associated with the passing of North Carolina’s HB2 or “bathroom bill” that forces transgender people to use public restrooms that correspond to their gender at birth.

Cuomo also banned travel to Mississippi in 2016 after the state passed its own controversial “religious freedom bill” that went into effect in October.

“Our athletic director (Shawn Heilbron) and coach (Matt) Senk did not realize that the travel ban included Mississippi,” Brian Miller, Stony Brook’s associate athletic director of communications, told the Mississippi Sun Herald. “We knew it was North Carolina, but we did not realize that it included Mississippi.

“Southern Miss obviously wasn’t pleased that we were trying to get out of it.” — Evan Grossman