St. John's Wins the Old Fashioned Way vs #13 Butler 76-73

              Before St. John's could put last night's 76-73 win over  #13 Butler on the left side of the ledger they had to endure one last scare. Even though the Red Storm's freshman star Shamorie Ponds had connected on four straight free throws, Butler still had one last chance to tie the game and force overtiime.  Bulldogs' guard Kelan Martin, who finished with 13 points took a pass and put up a half court shot that in hindsight may have reminded Butler fans of Gordon Hayward's last second heave against Duke in the 2010 National Championship game. Luckily for St. John's  Martin's shot also produced the same result. It was nearly perfect but bounced harmlessly off the rim. And at 76-73 St. John's had their first win over a ranked team since 2014, their first 1-0 conference start since 2011 and, perhaps most significantly, the first signature win of the Chris Mullin era.

              The win came thanks to several significant moments for St. John's, but perhaps the best thing St. John's did was compete and win in a game that was essentially an old fashioned Big East slug fest. With a loud and sold out crowd at Carnesecca Arena, they matched an intense and physical Butler team, played them even on the boards, and shot over 50 for the game against a defense that was infinitely better than the one they faced against Syracuse last Wednesday.

              Shamorie Ponds, who acknowledged the crowd in his post game remarks, was again the calmly efficient offensive star. His 26 points included a perfect 6-6 from the line and 9-15 shooting from the floor. It's worth noting also, that Ponds and his team mates did a terrific job of making the two point shots that Butler's extended defense gave them. They made just 4-16 three point tries but got enough from  2 point distance and enough from the free throw line (18-23) to earn the win. They combined that shooting effort with perhaps their best effort of the season defensively, holding a Butler team filled with veteran scoring options to 46% shooting from the floor and 24% from beyond the arc. And they held Butler's top two scorers, Martin and center Andrew Chrabascz  to 13 and 4 points respectively.

              The two teams played a  nearly even first 30 minutes and in the early going St. John's found offense from Bashir Ahmed who scored 11 of his 19 points in the first half. They also got another big lift from Darien Williams, who finished with six points on perfect shooting and six rebounds. While the Red Storm limited Butler's two top scorers they got strong contributions from Tyler Wideman  and guards Avery Woodson and Kethan Savage.

              The two teams were tied at 38 as the second half began. The veteran Bulldogs slowly began to build their margin behind Savage, Woodson and some unexpected good work off the bench from center Nate Fowler.  Butler grew that lead to 61-51 on a triple by Woodson with 10:34 remaining and after St. John's  quickly trimmed the lead to 5 on an Ahmed triple the next few minutes were played within a 3 to 7 point window.

        After a Martin jumper made the score 69-64 with 2:56 left, St. John's began what would ultimately be a victorious final push. Ponds connected on a contested three pointer and then combined with Malik Ellison  for a steal that saw Ellison scoop up the loose change and slam home the game tying basket. A layup by Wideman gave Butler the lead back but St. John's got another contested jumper, this time by Marcus LoVett, to pull even  at 71 with 41 seconds left. Ellison was then fouled rebounding a Tyler Lewis miss. He made the first free throw but missed the second only to be picked up by team mate Tariq Owens whose hustle created a tie up and kept possession with St. John's The inbounds play that followed allowed St. John's to get Ponds to the line where he drained both free throws. St. John's fouled purposely but Lewis made them pay for that strategy cutting the deficit back to a single point with 6 seconds left. Butler fouled Ponds again and again he made both free throws. With the lead back up to 3 points Chrabascz missed a long triple. Lewis then alertly fouled Williams who had rebounded the miss sending him to the line. He missed the free throw, which Chrabascz rebounded and quickly pitched it ahead to Martin for his last ditch game tying attempt. As the ball bounced off the rim and the team and fans celebrated a great win, national prominence may have still seemed a ways off for St. John's. But what they did do was welcome themselves back to the ultra competitive scrum that is Big East Conference Basketball. Two weeks ago even that first step forward did not seem likely to be made this season, but here they are and it's sure nice to have them back.

                                                                                                                                           

Penn State Makes Quick Work of St. John's At MSG

              Just as there had been in last Sunday's loss to LIU, there was a brief moment of prosperity for St. John's in this Sunday's loss to Penn State. It came with 9:47 left in the first half and gave St.  John's a 24-17 lead. But where last Sunday's loss unfolded slowly for the Red Storm, Penn State put this one away quickly with a 35-5 half closing spurt that turned their 7 point deficit into a 52-29 half time edge. From there, former Villanova assistant coach Pat Chambers' squad coasted to a 92-76 win over the Johnnies and planted more doubt in the hearts of St. John's fans about the direction of the program.

              Just as it had been last Sunday, St. John's defense was the chief culprit in the loss. In last week's game a handful of breakdowns gave LIU the opening they needed. In this one, the defense collapsed completely and Penn State simply got whatever shot they wanted. It would be easy to recite gruesome defensive numbers here but the eye test for today's game was likely uglier and more informative for those who watched. Mike Watkins Penn State's redshirt freshman center provided for the Nittany Lions everything that St. John's needs and doesn't get from its big men. He finished with 15 points 13 boards and 3 blocks and his point total included several finishing dunks off drive and drop assists from fellow freshman guard Tony Carr.

              What should perhaps worry St. John's fans most is that the Red Storm were beaten by a team whose roster and playing rotation is similar to their own. Three freshmen, Carr, Watkins and rugged forward Lamar Stevens start. And there are just two juniors in their top 7 players. Simply put Penn State's big guards got past St. John's small ones on offense. On defense they held St. John's three top scorers, Shamorie Ponds, Marcus LoVett and Bashir Ahmed to a combined 8-35 shooting clip. Inside the Lions sturdy but mobile Watkins proved more than St. John's tall but thin shot blockers could handle. It's clear that at 5-7 St. John's still has lots of work to do. They face old rival Syracuse on Wednesday before beginning conference play. In the future there will be more roster adjustments but for now every part of the team has to get better. There are, as coach Mullin said, a lot of games left but even for fans that want one of their favorite sons  to succeed it's difficult to remain optimistic in the face of bad losses and this one was as bad as it gets.

LIU Upsets St. John's At Barclay's Center 74-73

              With a bit over a minute and a half to go, St. John's appeared to be on the verge of their 4th straight win having dodged a major bullet. Malik Ellison had made a perfect diagonal pass to Federico Mussini who drained a left corner triple to give St. John's a  who drained a left corner triple to give St. John's a 73-69 lead. The play came off a blocked shot by Kassoum Yakwe, who had had an otherwise difficult day. And it gave St. John's a two possession margin after several failed tries to get it.

              The Johnnies did not handle their moment of prosperity well at all. In transition they failed to pick up  junior Iverson Fleming who was allowed to dribble into a triple of his own and slice St. John's margin back to a single point.  A side out set play on the next St. John's possession saw Shamorie Ponds hit a cutting Yakwe perfectly in the hands but he could not secure it and the ball fell harmlessly out of bounds. This time LIU found Iverson on a dribble hand off, they set a ball screen at the left elbow that Ponds appeared to cheat towards ever so slightly. Iverson adjusted with a hard dribble away from the screen and a double pump that gave him the perfect angle to bank a shot softly off the glass for the game winner. St. John's had two more chances, and in fact earned the last one when Ponds deflected an inbounds pass off an LIU players leg. On the final play they got Ponds a decent look for a free throw line jumper but the shot was short off the front rim and the Blackbirds from Brooklyn had their upset.

              After the game both Ponds and coach Chris Mullin made the perfunctory how they did not bring the same kind of energy they had in the win against Fordham on Thursday. And Mullin lamented the lack of execution on offense. I think it's worth noting also that the struggle to execute for St. John's or any other team that's struggling also happens at the defensive end of the floor. In addition to the last two plays where they failed to pick up Iverson in transition and then failed on ball screen defense, they were out maneuvered repeatedly by LIU's post players, former St. Anthony's (NJ) star Jerome Frink and redshirt junior Nura Zanna.

              The Blackbirds two "bigs" repeatedly got deep post position and scored easily in the lane against St. John's shot blocking. Sure Yankuba Sima did not play after announcing plans to transfer but with two shotblockers, Yakwe and Tariq Owens, still in the lineup Zanna an Frink combined for 33 points and 23 rebounds against St. John's inside players. In what could be described as a bit of basketball irony St. John's best big man yesterday was senior Darien Williams, himself a below the rim guy  who found himself suddenly moved up on the  depth chart with Sima absent. "I thought he was phenomenal", Mullin said of Williams. "If we did not have him in the first half we'd have been down by 20. I asked our guys at halftime to match his intensity at half time but we couldn't", Mullin said.  Despite Williams effort LIU outscored St. John's 32-24 in the paint.

              While St. John's effort may not have been what it needed to be, their execution and poise certainly wasn't. Marcus LoVett's absence for the third straight game did not help but this game was more about what LIU did in maintaining their poise than what St. John's did not do. Even when St. John's built their biggest margin at 58-51 early in the second half LIU never got rushed. Iverson, whose 21 points included the game winner led a back court that proved to be as tough and smart on the perimeter as Frink and Zanna were in the paint. Coach Jack Perri's team broke their own 2 game losing streak and ended a 3 game winning streak for St. John's.

              Notes and Observations Williams finished with 15 points and 7 rebounds. Trailing late in the first half St. John's staged a comeback and outscored the Blackbirds 11-5 without the benefit of a field goal. Ponds finished with a team high 18 points for St. John's while Bashir Ahmed added 14 and Mussini 10 for the Red Storm. LIU also got  10 points from Jashaun Agosto, a speedy freshman from Seattle Washington. With the win LIU moves to 7-3 while St. John's drops to 5-6 with the loss. 

Ponds Leads St. John's Past Fordham For 3rd Straight Win

              For some St. John's fans, the Red Storm took a step towards restoring order in New York City college hoops.

              Last night's 90-62 win over Bronx rival Fordham was easily the Johnnies best effort of the season. And in the eyes of those who think St. John's needs to re-establish college hoops supremacy in the city it avenged last season's loss at Rose Hill.

             Just as he did in a much tighter game Monday against CSUN Shamorie Ponds took control of the offense early and led St. John's to the win.  Thursday's performance was even better than Monday's for both Ponds and the team as a whole. The freshman guard from Thomas Jefferson High finished with 26 points on 7-11 shooting from distance and 9-13 overall. He did his usual  yeoman's job on the boards hauling in 7 caroms and added 9 assists and 4 steals.

              "It's not possible without my teammates", Ponds said of his performance, "they have really made the transition (to college basketball) easier for me."

              Also just as he did Monday Ponds came up huge in the absence of his backcourt partner Marcus LoVett, who missed his second straight game with a sprained ankle. While Ponds continued to establish himself as a leader in LoVett's absence. Federico Mussini came off the bench to score 20 points on 7-9 shooting. His driving basket and foul as the first half buzzer sounded capped an 8-0 run and helped St. John's regain their footing after Fordham had cut a double digit deficit to one on a basket by Taveras. After the two teams traded baskets to begin the second half an 11-2 run for the Johnnies effectively salted the game away. That rally included a three-pointer plus one from Ponds. Overall the Johnnies converted on 58% of their shots and 48%  from three point distance. Bashir Ahmed (11 points) and Tariq Owens (10) were the other double figure scorers.

              Both Owens and Malik Ellison made terrific contributions to St. John's defensive effort. Owens had 4 of his team's 10 blocks but more significantly did the best job of any Johnnies big man defending Chris Sengfelder, contesting his outside shots on pick and pop or trail three action. Sengfelder did finish with 20 points but much of that came when Owens was either off the floor or tending to more traditional defensive responsibilities at the rim. Similarly Ellison's primary contribution came guarding Fordham's best player Joseph Chartouny.  Injury related rust likely contributed to Chartounny's struggles but Ellison's length and due diligence helped limit him  to an 0-7 shooting night.

Ponds Takes Control and Helps St. John's Get Tough Win

              Perhaps, as St. John's forward Bashir Ahmed suggested, St. John's 76-70 win over Cal-State Northridge (CSUN) did not happen "the way we wanted to". But there was certainly a lot for Chris Mullin and his young charges to be happy about. After all they earned the win without their best offensive player  Marcus LoVett, who missed the game with a sprained ankle. And they won it despite the fact that the second half saw them cool down  considerably from a hot shooting start.

              St. John's had made 7 of 10 tries from beyond the arc in the first half but coach Reggie Theus, yes that's the guy from UNLV the Bulls and the NBC Saturday show "Hang Time", and his team found offense near the basket. The ball did not move freely for either side but the visitors from California played tough and trailed by just four (40-36) at the half.

 As Chris Mullin said after the game, "Not having him (LoVett) affects everything, starting lineup, rotations and guys roles, I thought overall our guys did a good job stepping up".

              Offensively the task of stepping up was left to Shamorie Ponds, who normally teams with LoVett in what has been a potent St. John's backcourt and he responded about as well as anyone could have expected. His 25 points came on 10-18 shooting from the floor and 3-7 from beyond the arc. Combine 5 assists with one turnover and you have a great performance from any point guard, especially a freshman playing in his ninth college game.

 "He's calm, he has good instincts and he trusts them", Mullin said of Ponds. And those instincts helped him in a different role brought about by LoVett's absence. They not only helped him get is team off to a good start but allowed him to help his team make an adjustment when their three point shooting went cold  (3-11) in the second stanza. He was able to get key baskets driving the ball to the basket. Along with Bashir Ahmed whose  13 points included 8 free throws, they got just enough offense to, as their coach suggested "grind this one out". It may not have been the artistic success that Friday's win was but for a team still learning how to win it likely felt every bit as good.

Notes and Observations St. John's had two other double figure scorers. Malik Ellison had 10 points and tied Ponds with a team high 5 assists. His playmaking was vital to Ponds' ability to be an aggressive scorer, trust his instincts and not think too much in his new role.  Federico Mussini's 12 points came on 4 of 7 three point tries and included three straight in the span of 51 seconds in the first half. His explosion helped the Johnnies regain their footing after CSUN had pulled ahead briefly in the first half. Mullin said that LoVett would likely  get an MRI tomorrow and was uncertain about his status for  the game vs Fordham on Thursday. Fordham's own point guard, reigning A-10 rookie of the year Joe Chartouny  missed Saturday's loss to Harvard and his status for Thursday is uncertain as well.

Punter's Late Basket Lifts All Hallows past Xaverian 67-66

              Kieffer Punter hit a tough mid range step back bank shot with just under a minute and a half to go that gave All Hallows the lead for good at 65-63. From there two more free throws from Punter and strong defense help them earn a tough win at Xaverian Sunday afternoon.

              Punter's clutch shot put the finishing touch on what was a well balanced and winning effort for the Gales. He finished with 17 points while fellow senior guard Carnell White finished with a team high 23 for the visitors from the Bronx. The Gaels also got key contributions from another senior Cameron Otiti as well as promising sophomore Nick Johnson. They scored effectively both at the rim and from beyond the arc. That consistent offense combined with defensive stops in the closing moments helped coach Marvin McCullough's squad earn a tough win.

              At 6'4" Punter has the skill, size vision and shooting ability to play both  guard spots. He has been the focus of the Gaels offense for the last two seasons and, like his team, has struggled through growing pains. If yesterday's game is an indicator of the season both Punter and the team could be ready for a good season. While they will likely struggle against teams with good size such as Molloy, and CK, their ability to play with poise and confidence yesterday on the road as Xaverian rallied from a 7 point third quarter deficit  bodes well for the rest of their season. They found multiple sources for points and Punter did a great job making decisions, both scoring himself and getting his team mates involved.

              The Clippers played their first league game without league game under new coach Tommy Burns and struggled to find offense in the early going. All Hallows did a terrific job keying on the Clippers' senior  wing Zack Bruno, who overcame a slow shooting start to finish with a game high 29 points. Sophomore Isaiah Amazan and senior John Boyle each augmented Bruno's effort with strong games although  both sat for long stretches thanks to foul problems. Boyle is a 6'6" wide body who finishes effectively with either hand around the basket. He's also the team's best screener and his ability to do that helped  create scoring chances for Amazan and Bruno in the second half. He's someone division 2's and 3's should have their eye on.

              Right now both of these teams are building and All Hallows is further along in that process while Xaverian will likely spend much of the year trying to find out how this edition of the team can play following last season's memorable championship run. The top of the CHSAA "AA" division will be filled with great size as well as talent and while these teams don't have big men there's plenty of talent for colleges at all levels to watch grow and develop..