TAPE MEASURES
Film work keys Ahmed’s surge for peaking Storm
It was no coincidence St. John’s best performance of the season came on the same night Bashir Ahmed produced his best effort. Wednesday night at the Garden, St. John’s looked like a potential Big East Tournament sleeper, manhandling a quality Marquette team, and it wasn’t Shamorie Ponds or Marcus LoVett Jr., the program’s two impressive freshmen guards, who keyed the victory.
Both were of course instrumental in the commanding, 86-72, win, but it was Ahmed, slashing and shooting his way to a career-high 23 points, who the Golden Eagles didn’t have an answer for.
The 6-foot-7 Ahmed has scored 14 points or more 11 times and St. John’s has won seven of those games. When he is productive and active, the Red Storm’s attack isn’t as predictable — opponents can’t just focus on the two southpaw guards — and as a result, it is more potent.
“Any time you get another consistent threat, it puts pressure on the opposing defense,” St. John’s coach Chris Mullin said, as his team prepared to visit fourth-ranked Villanova on Saturday night at Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.
Ahmed was one of the top junior-college recruits in the country, but The Bronx native’s first season in Queens has been up and down, a mix of questionable shot selection, overaggressive drives into traffic and impressive shotmaking. When St. John’s (11-13, 5-6 Big East) went winless at the Battle 4 Atlan- tis tournament in the Bahamas, Ahmed struggled, shooting just 34 percent from the field and averaging 10.6 points. Over the non-conference season, he averaged 12.4 points.
During the December holidays, unhappy with how he was performing, Ahmed decided he had to figure out what was going wrong. He began watching extra film of himself on his own.
“I knew I had to start playing better,” he recalled, “in order for our team to start winning.”
Ahmed has been a different player in the Big East season, reaching double figures in 10 of 11 contests, and averaging 13.8 points and 4.5 rebounds per game. He has been even better lately, scoring 16.4 points, grabbing 5.2 rebounds and shooting 40 percent from 3-point land over the last five games, three St. John’s victories.
“Sometimes, when you’re on the court, you don’t really see everything, but when you watch film, you see everything better,” Ahmed said. “I feel like [watching] film has really helped me a lot.”
Division I basketball has been an adjustment for Ahmed. The ball is in his hands less, and opponents are more skilled, athletic and smart. He can’t get by only on physical gifts. That’s where film comes in. Everything Mullin was saying — the difference between a good shot and a bad one, knowing when to attack and when to wait, not forcing drives — he was seeing. His decision-making was iffy.
In practice, they do drills based on such situations. But the best teacher, as Mullin often has said, is game experience. Failure can be the best teacher.
“I do think he had a mindset of scoring, which we need, but there’s a way to go about it,” Mullin said. “His approach has changed. He understands ball movement, and when to attack, as opposed to attacking all the time.”
That’s not to say Mullin is always pleased with Ahmed’s shot selection. It remains a work in progress. But like his young teammates, Ahmed has made major strides of late, and he has noticed the results he is getting with those changes.
“I knew I could play better,” Ahmed said. “I know what I’m capable of.”