UConn 78 St. John’s 74

The World’s Most Famous Arena has become a house of horrors for St. John’s.

For the fourth time this season, the Red Storm had a highly-ranked team come into their house – the Garden – and leave with a win that left the St. John’s players feuding with each other andangry at themselves.

This time it was Connecticut, ranked first in both national polls and second by The Post, that left the 9th-ranked Red Storm in a state of rage and frustration. Down by 12, Connecticut rallied to score a 78-74 win and remain the nation’s only undefeated team.

St. John’s now has lost here to Stanford, 55-53, Purdue, 70-69, Duke last Sunday, 92-88 in overtime, and Connecticut.

“This was the toughest loss I’ve had since I’ve been at St. John’s,” said forward Ron Artest, “because we could have won. I really don’t want to even think about it.”

St. John’s (17-5, 8-2 in the Big East) has no choice but to think about these games. The only conclusion the Red Storm can draw is that they’re a very, very good team that can scare the living daylights out of the nation’s elite but they aren’t good enough to beat a Top 5 team.

This most recent loss left freshman point guard Erick Barkley and Artest engaging in a heated exchange with 8.3 seconds left. The two exchanged profanities.

After the game Artest said he was angry at Barkley for not getting him the ball in the final minute. Barkley tried to downplay the spat saying that he and Artest are competitors who try to push one another.

This was similar to the scenario that exploded after the Purdue loss when Artest erupted in a post-game locker-room tirade. St. John’s coach Mike Jarvis has tried to rein in his superstar sophomore but Artest is a strong personality who speaks his mind.

“If everybody gives 100 percent, including me, we will get these wins,” said Artest. “I’m not used to losing. All these guys when we were in high school we won by 15 or 50. Now we get here and people just choke, they don’t want to play the same ‘D’ they played in high school. So I don’t know what’s the deal.”

Barkley told The Post that, “That’s a B.S. answer. We didn’t choke. I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

This fire is what makes St. John’s such a dangerous foe. The Red Storm bring this white-hot competitiveness to every game, every practice. After losing to Duke last Sunday in the best game of the season and rallying to beat Syracuse 75-70 Wednesday night, the Connecticut game represented the third battle in a week of war.

The Huskies (19-0 overall, 11-0 in the Big East), behind Richard Hamilton’s 3-point shooting, jumped out to a 16-3 lead that had the large contingent of UConn fans rocking the Garden. Jarvis called a timeout and inserted Lavor Postell (23 points, 11 rebounds) for Albert Richardson. The move created mismatch nightmares for Connecticut and St. John’s scored nine straight points, six by Bootsy Thornton, to get back in the game.

With Connecticut leading 35-32 late in the half, the Red Storm reeled off nine straight points to take its first lead. St. John’s went to the halftime break up 43-38 and appeared on the verge of finally getting that breakthrough win over a Top 5 team in the Garden

When St. John’s opened the second half with a 10-3 run fueled by Postell’s and Reggie Jessie’s offensive rebounding, Connecticut’s Jim Calhoun burned two timeouts to try to stop the bleeding that threatened to kill his team’s undefeated season.

“I just said to them, very quietly, which is not easy for me, ‘Think about this. Think about what you’re doing out there.’ Then Ricky [Moore] said something and Khalid [El-Amin] said, ‘This can’t be happening.'”

Which is exactly what Jarvis must have been thinking when Barkley got poked in the right eye and had to go to the bench. Connecticut immediately stepped up its pressure defense and went on a 10-0 run to make it a 53-51 St. John’s lead with 12:51 left.

Barkley returned and the Red Storm went up 59-51. That’s when Connecticut started playing like a veteran team that has a lot of answers. Trailing 65-61, UConn went on an 11-0 run, capped by a Hamilton 3 from the top of the key to seize control of the game at 72-67. Hamilton had a team-high 22.

“I have said this for a long time and I said this to Mike Jarvis, it is simply great when you are at Madison Square Garden on a Saturday afternoon playing a great team and that’s exactly what they [St. John’s] are,” said Calhoun. “They are as good as anybody we played, including Michigan State or anybody else.”

St. John’s has proven it can play with anyone. But it can’t beat the elite teams and its record at the Garden is 3-4.