St. John’s back in the Big Dance:
St. John’s is final team in Dance, now Mullin’s crew hopes to make most of gift
What? Me worry? Chris Mullin and the Red Storm were certainly sweating out their inclusion in the field of 68. The Johnnies were the last team to get a bid — and the last team announced during the selection show — and now they’re dancing for the first time under Mullin.
It was 6:33 p.m., and time was running out on the St. John’s basketball team. The Selection Show for the NCAA Tournament was a half-hour old, and the news had not been good so far.
Early on, the first at-large playin pairing had been revealed, and it was Temple-Belmont. That was good news for backers of March Cinderellas, less so for the players and coaches and family members gathered on the second floor of Bent Hall, the business school building located right across from Carnesecca Arena.
Then, Villanova — Big East regular-season and tournament champs — was revealed as a No. 6 seed. The league’s most respected team was being disrespected by the committee. And the second floor at Bent Hall got a little more anxious.
“Maybe we deserved that,” senior Marvin Clark II would say later. “We put ourselves in this predicament.” And then, in a flash: joy. Then, in a flash, the players were on their feet and the second floor was flooded with cheering. St . John’s and Arizona State will play Wednesday night at Dayton Arena, with the winner earning an extra two days of tournament at least, drawing Buffalo in Tulsa, Okla., on Friday in the West Region.
“Everyone hopped up so fast I couldn’t even see the TV,” St. John’s coach Chris Mullin said with a wide grin that reflected the first real basketball happiness this team has been able to enjoy since picking off Villanova last month. “And now we go back to work.”
Bernard Muir, the athletics director at Stanford and chairman of the NCAA selection committee, acknowledged that the wait for St. John’s was every bit as torturous as it seemed: They were the 68th team added to the 68-team field.
Once thought to be a lock for t he main draw with as high as an 8- or 9- seed, the Johnnies’ late-season swoon nearly crossed them out of the draw entirely, which would have been a disastrous end to a season that had contained so much hope right from the start. The Johnnies started the season at 12-0 and were ranked as high as No. 24.
Mullin, who played in four NCAA Tournaments as a player at St. John’s from 1981-85, said he believes the nature of his team bodes well for what lies ahead of them.
“A lot of variables don’t matter when it comes to us,” he said. “It’s all about our energy and passion. If that’s the team that shows up, and we play defense and get deflections, then everything else falls into place.”
The Johnnies and Sun Devils played last season in the Basketball Hall of Fame Classic at Staples Center in Los Angeles, and Arizona State took an 82-70 win. Shamorie Ponds had 19 points and Clark had 18 in that game.
Mullin and Arizona State coach Bobby Hurley have known each other for years, and Hurley played with St. John’s assistant coach Mitch Richmond in the NBA for the Kings.
St. John’s is making its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2 0 1 5, but the Johnnies do feature two players on the team with March experience: Clark, who played in two tourneys at Michigan State (including a Final Four in 2015), and Mustapha Heron, who made the field while a freshman at Auburn last year.
“It’s definitely different for us,” Clark said. “I could see the other faces around the room, the sheer joy, because for guys like Shamorie, it’s their first time and that’s pretty great.”
Said Ponds: “I think we’ll all be ready for this. This was everything we wanted.”
It will be the Johnnies’ 30th appearance in the NCAA Tournament — but only its third since 2002. The last time they won a game in the tournament was March 16, 2000, when, as a 2- seed, they beat Northern Arizona, 61-56, before being upset in the second round by Gonzaga, a No. 10 seed. Their last three appearances have all been one-and-done.