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.