The ball bounced off Rasheem Dunn’s foot, and he hit the deck, trying to retrieve it. It was futile. It caromed into the arms of the opponent. The clock was soon at triple zeroes.
Dunn stayed on the floor for a few more moments, trying to process the sudden turn. Just a half hour earlier, St. John’s was on cruise control, up 17. Georgetown was without its star guard, Mac McClung, who had suffered a foot injury. The final minutes were supposed to be garbage time, not offer crushing disappointment.
“I couldn’t step up and make the big play my team needed me to [make],” a somber Dunn said after his fourth turnover of the afternoon sealed the Johnnies’ dismal 73-72 loss to Georgetown at the Garden.
It wasn’t the final play that ultimately doomed St. John’s and saddled new coach Mike Anderson with his worst loss in his first season in Queens. It was the lack of execution and aggression over most of the second half. It was failing to deal with the Hoyas’ pressure, leading to 12 second-half turnovers. It was an inability to defend the bigger Hoyas in the paint. It was getting outscored 28-14 over the final 11 minutes 32 seconds. It was lackluster possessions full of standing around and long, contested jump shots. It was, somehow, finishing worse than a team that played its five starters all at least 34 minutes and had to give minutes to two walk-ons.
“We were playing on our heels, that was the difference,” Anderson said after St. John’s lost for the fifth time in six games and now sits just a half-game out of the Big East basement. “Sometimes, that is playing not to lose. I just thought we were not in attack mode.”
Even with everything that went wrong in the second half, St. John’s had a three-point lead with 1:47 to go after a LJ Figueroa off-balanced, wrong-footed banker as the shot clock expired. But the last three St. John’s possessions produced a missed Mustapha Heron 3-pointer, a shot-clock violation and the Dunn (16 points) turnover. Georgetown got within one on Omer Yurtseven’s basket in the paint and then went ahead for good on Yurtseven’s layup with 10.2 seconds left.
On the play, St. John’s (13-10, 2-8 Big East) picked up full court. Anderson said the plan was token pressure, to make the Hoyas take some time bringing the ball up. But the Red Storm got caught in the backcourt and Jagan Mosely beat the pressure, penetrated into the lane and set up Yurtseven (13 points, 15 rebounds) inside.
“It wasn’t designed to be a trap. It was to make them work,” Anderson said. “That was a bad decision on our part to go and trap.”
For nearly 30 minutes, so much had gone right. Anderson’s changes in the starting lineup — replacing Heron and Nick Rutherford with Greg Williams Jr. and Julian Champagnie, who notched a double-double with 14 points and 10 rebounds — worked well. Heron produced 16 points off the bench. St. John’s had zero first-half turnovers. Everyone was contributing. A blowout seemed likely. But then Georgetown began pressing, doing to St. John’s what it has done to others, and the game got tight.
“The weird thing about it is, we get after each other from a pressure standpoint each and every day,” Anderson said. “Just not making the right decisions at the right time. … That falls on me as a coach. I’ll take the blame on that.”
Instead of a third Big East victory, this loss joins the setbacks to No. 10 Seton Hall and No. 16 Butler, games St. John’s had but couldn’t close out. Finishing remains something this team has yet to master. Earlier in the season, Anderson bemoaned this team’s lack of experience late in games. But that’s no longer an excuse.
“We’re in position,” he said, “but we got to finish.”
