Two Career Highs Lift St. John's to a Big Win in Their Return to Action

 

     On a night that saw St. John’s return from a 17-day COVID pause and open their Big East season, they got career best performances from two players. One, Julian Champagne has his star already well established. The second, Dylan Adde-Wusu has a star that’s just beginning to emerge in this his sophomore season. Together, they lifted the Red Storm to an 89-84 win over DePaul at Carnesecca Arena on a night when Louie celebrated his 97^th birthday.

    “Nothing surprises me about this kid”, coach Mike Anderson said of Champagne after he established career highs with 34 points and 16 rebounds. “He’s one of the hardest working kids I’ve had some good ones who worked hard like Joe Johnson and Bobby Portis”, Anderson said referencing a pair of NBA players whom he coached while at Arkansas. Champagne’s outing was also typically efficient as he converted on 12-22 shots including 4-7 from 3-point range.

   While Champagne started quickly with 13 first half points, it took Adde-Wusu a bit longer to get in the swing of things. He called it “a bad first half” for himself but St. John’s struggled at times also. Fatigue may well have manifested itself in two areas, free throw shooting, where St. John’s shot just 13-23 for the game and defensive rotations, which is harder to quantify but resulted in some easy hoops for DePaul. And while St. John’s led by as many as 11 in the opening stanza, they struggled to maintain a lead. It took a driving layup by Posh Alexander, who oddly did not start the game, to send the Johnnies to the locker room leading by just 4 at 39-35.

   That play turned out to be a portent of things to come for Posh who scored 10 of his 16 points in the second half including a pair of 3 pointers.

   The Johnnies opened up an 8-point margin behind those triples and maintained it until with the score 51-43 DePaul used a 7-0 run to trim the deficit to just one with 15:44 left. A dunk by Adde-Wusu briefly stopped that run but The Blue Demons got right back to work behind West Virginia transfer David Jones who connected on a jumper and a drive. When forward Brandon Johnson connected on a corner triple and converted a free throw, St. John’s found themselves trailing 60-55 11:50 remaining.

    After that Champagne and Montez Mathis helped St. John’s regain some traction offensively. Following a pair of free throws Mathis fed Champagne for a layup and then took a pass from Adde-Wusu for another basket. With St. John’s leading 65-63 with 8:55 to go the two teams traded baskets until Champagne gave St. John’s the lead for good at 71-69 with 7:14 remaining and an assist from Adde-Wusu. On St. John’s next possession O’mar Stanley took a pass from Alexander to give the Red Storm a two-possession margin. After DePaul closed the margin to 73-72 with 5:29 left Adde-Wusu fed Champagne first for a layup and then for a triple to make the score 78-72. Trailing by six DePaul had one last rally. They pulled to within 84-81 on consecutive layups by Brandon Johnson and Jevon Freeman-Liberty. That set the stage for the biggest of many big plays Adde-Wusu made. While he rightly attributed the bulk of his career high 17 points to his cutting and good passing from teammates, the shot that gave the Johnnies an 87-81 lead with 26 seconds left came on a play where the offense was stagnant and they needed and got a terrific clutch shot from a guy who appeared to be improving with each game prior to the COVID break.  If he can become a consistent 3^rd scoring option. St. John’s will become a tough out for any team in the conference. While the Johnnies could not get an NCAA resume building win in non-conference play there will be chances, beginning with Saturday’s game at Providence, to build that resume within league play.

Notes and Observations: Both Rafael Pinzon and Tareq Coburn missed tonight’s game, Coburn due to an injury and Pinzon for COVID related health and safety reasons even though he was present at the game. According to coach Anderson their availability for Saturday’s game will be a game time decision.

Adde-Wusu also had a team high 8 assists for the Johnnies while Joel Soriano had 9 rebounds and 3 blocks to go with 4 points and 3 assists.

DePaul dropped to 0-3 in league play despite a 24 point effort by Freeman-Liberty.