CINCINNATI — Ten good minutes wasn’t good enough.

Not on the road. Not against a desperate team playing for its season.

St. John’s clawed out of an 11-point, second-half deficit, but couldn’t finish off the come-from-behind effort.

The Johnnies, truth be told, didn’t deserve to leave Cintas Center victorious.

Not with how they defended. Not with how they rebounded. Coming off a 43-point loss at top-ranked Connecticut, Xavier knocked off St. John’s, 88-77, sending the Johnnies back to .500 in Big East play ahead of Saturday’s showdown with the reigning national champion Huskies at the Garden.

They were flat coming off their bye week, out-worked for the majority of this frustrating performance.

“It couldn’t have been good enough, we lost the game,” Daniss Jenkins said, referring to St. John’s effort. “For me, I’m always just telling the guys we need to go harder, we need to work harder. That’s all I believe in. That’s what made me. So I try to tell the guys, we have to work harder and play smart at the same time.”

Over the final 2:43, Xavier closed on a 13-2 run, which began with two Desmond Claude free throws. Quincy Olivari followed with a 3-pointer and St. John’s dropped its fourth game in five tries.

The close to the game followed a similar pattern to many of the Johnnies’ losses this season: a shaky finish.

The game really turned when Claude had his shot blocked by Chris Ledlum, but St. John’s couldn’t get to the defensive rebound and Olivari sank the back-breaking 3-pointer that extended the lead to five with 1:57 to go.

“Sometimes games are won or lost on a loose-ball rebound,” coach Rick Pitino said. “We were down two there, got him to miss the shot and didn’t come up with the loose-ball rebound. They did and then scored.”

Jenkins did all he could, scoring 25 points on 11 of 17 shooting, and Joel Soriano added 21 points and 15 rebounds. But nobody else really stepped up.

Coming off a bout with strep throat, Jordan Dingle added 12 points despite not being at full strength.

“We didn’t get a whole lot out of other guys tonight,” Pitino said.

More than any offensive shortcomings, though, St. John’s (13-8, 5-5) defense was its biggest problem. Xavier (11-10, 5-5) had 28 points in transition and 32 points in the paint.

It won the battle on the glass by 10. Claude, Olivari and Dayvion McKnight combined to score 65 points.

In the first meeting between the two teams, a 15-point St. John’s victory, that trio was limited to 42 points.

On the first possession of the second half, St. John’s got a stop, but couldn’t get to the defensive rebound, a foreboding sign.

It couldn’t string together multiple stops and saw the deficit increase to a game-high 11 when Jenkins lost control of his dribble and Xavier’s Dailyn Swain flew in for a crowd-pleasing dunk.

There was still 13:10 remaining, more than enough time for St. John’s to rally.

Finally, with 3:59 left after getting close on several occasions, St. John’s pulled even on a Jenkins jumper. It forced a Xavier timeout. From there, it was all Musketeers.

“I’ve said this all along, we’re not a great team. We’re a hard-working team getting better,” Pitino said. “Our guys did a lot of really good things tonight. They could’ve won the game, but a loose-ball rebound turned the momentum around.

“We’ve improved. I think we’re a good team right now. I thought we were very average [most of the season]. In order to beat a team like Xavier on the road, you’ve got to give a great performance and we certainly didn’t [do that] defensively tonight.”