Hoyas handle cold Red Storm

St. John’s appeared to have turned a corner with a threegame win streak as the New Year began, instead the Red Storm now look to be traveling in circles.

A 83-55 rout at the hands of rival Georgetown on Monday night in Washington put the Johnnies into a three-game slide, back to two games under .500, and at 2-3 in the Big East after starting the conference season 2-0. A Garden date with No. 3 Villanova awaits at noon Sunday.

Georgetown went on a 22-2 run spanning both halves to take control. St. John’s didn’t make its second field goal of the second half against the Georgetown zone until Marcus LoVett’s 3-pointer at the 9:17 mark and the Red Storm’s fifth basket of the second half came with 22.2 seconds left in the game on Malik Ellison’s dunk. St. John’s (8-10, 2-3) scored just 18 points in the final 20 minutes on 5-of-25 shooting and turned the ball over 11 times.

“If you don’t make shots you’re going to have trouble against anything,” St. John’s coach Chris Mullin said. “We’ve actually been pretty good against the zone. It’s the defense we do well against; we shoot the ball pretty well. It was a total collapse tonight.”

L.J. Peak made 10 straight free throws and scored 16 points for Georgetown (9-8, 1-4), which won its first Big East game of the season. Rodney Pryor and Jagan Mosely each scored 13 points. The Hoyas were 27-of-33 from the foul line.

Shamorie Ponds scored 12 points on 3-of-11 shooting for St. John’s, which finished shooting 27.6 percent from the floor. The Red Storm has lost 12 straight games at Georgetown.

“I felt pretty good being down seven [at half] the way we were playing,” Mullin said. “In the second half our energy and effort on both sides wasn’t there. We had some decent outings where offensively we were good and the defense struggled, but tonight it was both, especially in the second half.