The stakes are different this time around. A year ago, Providence walked into the Garden for its first-round game with St. John’s, and for 32 minutes or so the Friars pulverized the Johnnies, overpowered them, did whatever they pleased, and not even a late, frantic blizzard could rescue the (wink, wink) home team.

It was a crushing loss. You never know exactly what goes though the minds of the people who pick the field for the NCAA Tournament, but it was apparent to everyone afterward the Johnnies had blown their last, best chance to elbow their way into the field of 68.

“We didn’t help our cause tonight. It’s in the selection committee’s hands, and that’s not a good thing,” St. John’s coach Steve Lavin said when that 79-74 loss was over, and three days later he was proven to be right, and a few days after that, when Robert Morris slapped his team around at Carnesecca Arena in the first round of the NIT the selection committee was proven to be right, too.

St. John’s isn’t playing for its season Thursday afternoon, when once again it will face Providence in its Big East lid-lifter, but in some ways it is playing for something even greater. There is little question the Johnnies will be somewhere in the field Sunday when the brackets are released.

And there is little question that every team that faces them is impressed by what they see, Friars coach Ed Cooley simply the latest one to gush about them ahead of Thursday’s quarterfinal: “They’re one of the hottest teams in the country. They have a lot of weapons.”

True, and true. But they have also stumbled this year, enough that their seeding will be one of the true curiosities awaiting them when the pairings are revealed early Sunday evening. Right now, their RPI is 31, and Providence’s is 23, and while these things are far from an exact science a third victory over the Friars would almost certainly land the Johnnies on one of the 7-seed lines in the NCAA field.

How important is that? Well, it would mean they likely would be a slight favorite over a 10 seed in the first round. More significantly, should they win that game, it would set up a second-round game against a 2 seed, instead of matching up with a 1 seed, which is what the survivor of one of the 8-9 games would have to face.

And … well, you never say never. But if St. John’s wants to maximize what it’s already accomplished this season and make this more than a cameo stopover in its first NCAA berth in four years, it’s probably best for the Johnnies to avoid sharing an immediate bracket with Kentucky, Virginia or Duke.

This is, after all, when this splendid senior class will be receiving its final grades, and if it is just that it should finally taste what the NCAA Tournament is all about, it’s also right to expect that they should expect to have a fighting chance at the Sweet 16, rarefied air St. John’s last visited in 1999, where it’s been only twice since the Final Four team 30 years ago.

These things can be fickle, of course. Four years ago St. John’s had a similar team to this one, heavy with seniors who were famished for success, got some, got on a roll and seemed to have enough to make a run … except early in the Big East Tournament quarterfinals against Syracuse, D.J. Kennedy went down with a torn ACL, and the sixth-seeded Johnnies wound up getting bombed by an 11th seed, Gonzaga, in the first round of the NCAAs in Denver.

Still: This is the season so much of Lavin’s energies was built around, and there are those four seniors, all of them wanting to leave a deep impression. Maybe winning this tournament is a big ask — Villanova likely lurks in the semifinals, after all — but winning a game and impressing the committee? That should be a bare-minimum requirement. The rest is gravy.