A very young St. John's team made an
adjustment that many veteran college teams would've had trouble with, and it
got them a huge win not only for their resume, but for their confidence as
well.
Following a trouncing at the hands of
Georgetown on Saturday and a narrow loss to Rutgers a week ago, Steve Lavin and
the Red Storm returned to Madison Square Garden having put aside the zone
defense they had played all season in favor of man-to man. That decision was
made, according to Lavin, because the Johnnies were facing the Big East's top
three point shooting team. And while there were some ugly early moments where
they gave up layups because they could not help off Notre Dame's shooters, the
strategy took away the Irish's best weapon, limiting them to just 9 tries from
beyond the arc and one made field goal.
St. John's got going offensively
behind forward Jakarr Sampson who scored 14 of his 17 points in the opening 20m
minutes. The Johnnies led by just one at the intermission and after a quick
second half start by Notre Dame, they rallied behind D'Angelo Harrison Amir Garrett
and Jamal Branch to take the game's first significant lead. Branch, who
struggled to contain Irish floor general Eric Atkins' dribble penetration, had
his second straight strong floor game offensively contributing 8 points one
assist and just one turnover in 31 minutes of action. His pass to D'angelo
Harrison gave him a great look at a three pointer that he made to give the Johnnies
their biggest lead at 55-43 with 10:50 left in the game.
Despite having their best weapon taken
away Notre Dame had a run left in them. With St. John's working hard to take
the three point shot away point guard Atkins led his team on an 18-4 run to take
the lead at 61-59 with just under 4-1/2 minutes left. Branch and Notre
Dame's Jarien Greene traded baskets to
make it 63-61 when Sampson passed to Harrison for a triple that gave St. John's
the lead for good at 64-63 with 2-1/2 minutes left. Harrison finished with just 8 points had what
his coach called "the most mature game of his career" because not
only did he not force action in the face of a low point total had 3 assists
(all for dunks he pointed out) and after he gave his team the lead had a key
block to prevent what would have been a go-ahead basket for the Irish, one of
three for him for the game. Following a
Sampson free throw, the team's best shot blocker Chris Obekpa had one of his
own to prevent a game tying basket and then Branch put the game away with two
free throws to put the game on ice. Adkins scored a game high 21 points for
Notre Dame in the loss while Phil Greene added 13 points and Amir Garrett 11 in
the win for St. John's.
The Red Storm will look to even their
Big East record at 3-3 Saturday against DePaul.
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