ALL SKIDDING ASIDE
Slumping Johnnies really need a win vs. Nova to aid team psyche
LET’S get this out of the way: This isn’t a must-win game for St. John’s. Not in January, certainly not when you’re a projected NCAA Tournament team according to almost all bracketology experts.
But do the Johnnies need to find a way to knock off Villanova on Wednesday night at the Garden? Yes, yes they do. The Johnnies need it for their own sanity, so their fan base doesn’t take a collective leap off the Queensborough Bridge, so their coach doesn’t run his players into oblivion during their upcoming week without a game. It would calm the waters and stabilize what has been a mostly successful first season under Rick Pitino, before a trip to Xavier on Jan. 31 followed by a Feb. 3 showdown against No. 1 Connecticut.
Most of all, St. John’s (12-7, 4-4) needs to win a basketball game after three straight losses, two by a single point to ranked foes Creighton and Marquette, the other a blowout at the hands of surprising Seton Hall. It needs to play a complete 40 minutes, not good fragments and shaky ones, as it did in the frustrating loss to Marquette on Saturday. It needs to bludgeon under- sized Villanova inside, as it did on Jan. 6 at Finneran Pavilion, when it piled up 42 points in the paint. That means Joel Sori- ano finding his game from the opening tip. It means not settling for jumpers. It means aggression from all of the Johnnies. It means desperation and a sustained sense of urgency.
Pitino saw that in the final six minutes of the loss to Marquette, after everything had gone wrong, a six-point halftime lead turning into a 13-point deficit. He felt his team took a “quantum leap” with how it finished.
“Tonight with six minutes to go in the game, they went after greatness,” the Hall of Fame coach said. “With six minutes to go, we aspired to be great.”
Was this coach-speak? Was this Pitino knowing the Johnnies were fragile and needing to be built up rather than broken down? Possibly. But he also saw a team that fought adversity, that did everything possible to win a game that seemed out of reach at the time, that defended extremely well, that got good shots and attacked the offensive glass with ferocity.
“We kind of proved to ourselves that we are capable of a comeback in a short amount of time,” point guard Daniss Jenkins said. “I think that’s why coach was optimistic.”
That needs to have a carryover effect and serve as a jumping off point to a victory on Wednesday. It won’t be easy, obviously. Villanova is likely to be just as desperate, having dropped three of its last four games, the lone win coming over cellar-dweller DePaul at home. Star guard Justin Moore, who missed the loss to St. John’s a few weeks back, will be available and is starting to look like himself after shaking off the rust. Villanova nearly knocked off top-ranked Connecticut on Saturday.
Let’s be clear, again: St. John’s NCAA Tournament hopes won’t die with a loss against Villanova. It does not hinge on the result of this contest. BracketMatrix.com, which averages out 76 tournament projections, has the Johnnies as an eight-seed. They have a NET ranking of 41 and a 6-6 record in Quad 1 and 2 games, strong numbers at this point of the year.
This game will not make or break them. But it is nevertheless incredibly important. This team needs to respond when the ball goes up, just as it responded in the final minutes against Marquette. It can’t let this losing streak further mushroom with more difficult games directly on the horizon.
This just may be a crossroads in St. John’s season. The Johnnies certainly hope it is a turning point in the right direction.
➤ Senior guard Jordan Dingle returned to practice over the past few days after missing the last two games due to a bout with COVID-19 and is expected to be available. St. John’s, though, will be without fellow guard Nahiem Alleyne, who suffered an ankle injury in the Marquette loss. The injury isn’t nearly as serious as initially feared, and the senior may just miss this one game.