By Patrick McCormack
An NCAA tournament berth doesn’t seem to be a certainty for St. John’s University.
Big plays eluded the Red Storm men’s basketball team as they dropped their second consecutive Big East contest 65-53 to Xavier at Madison Square Garden Tuesday. Musketeers freshman Jalen Reynolds scored 17 points and grabbed 16 rebounds.
St. John’s Coach Steve Lavin thought Xavier made key plays when needed.
“I thought that Xavier played very efficiently on offense tonight,” he said. “They had point-blank shots at the rim and high-percentage looks from start to finish. We were disappointed with our lack of resistance on the defensive end of the floor at the rim. Offensively, we struggled to find a rhythm and we couldn’t get a string of defensive stops.”
Xavier (19-9,9-6) went on a 12-3 run midway through the second half, which put it ahead 51-41. During this spurt, Xavier held St. John’s, which shot 32.3 percent from the floor in the half, without a field goal for 6:23. Junior Phil Greene IV, who had five points, said St. John’s’ ineffectiveness on defense was the key to the game.
“They did what they wanted on their side,” he said. “They had layups and dunks while we had zero fast-break points, and that’s where we get a lot of our offense. We didn’t get enough stops tonight.”
St. John’s (18-11, 8-8) showed some life when it started finally hitting shots and went on a 10-4 rally to cut the Musketeer lead to 55-51, on a bucket from JaKarr Sampson, who led the Red Storm with 14 points.
St. John’s still struggled to make enough plays to get ahead. Xavier took a 31-30 lead into the half. It shot 56 percent from the field. Jamal Branch, who had five points for the Red Storm, saw the team’s lack of communication on defense as an issue in the first half.
“We didn’t do a good job of communicating, especially on the backside of screens, and they got a lot of their points off that,” he said.
The Johnnies, which have two regular season games remaining, are coming off a 57-54 loss to Villanova on the road, and they saw another good game from freshman Rysheed Jordan and senior Orlando Sanchez, who each had 11 points. But their tallies were not enough for a victory.
Lavin thought his interior defense had to perform better even though it was not a normal week for the team. Sanchez missed the game against Nova because of the birth of his daughter. Jordan was mourning the death of a family member, who was shot and killed last weekend in Philadelphia.
“It was the most unusual week of my coaching career, but at the end of the day that should not affect our post defense,” Lavin said. “We were concerned with not having our normal preparation routine as players and teams are creatures of habit. It was a very disjointed week. I’m disappointed with the lack of resistance tonight of our interior defense.”
