The Big East was bound to take a step back.
Defending national champion Villanova lost four stars to the NBA. Defending Big East champion Xavier lost coach Chris Mack. Creighton lost its top-two scorers. Seton Hall lost the core of three straight NCAA Tournament teams.
Two weeks into the season, the drop-off has been even more drastic than expected, highlighted by the Big Ten’s beatdown of the Big East in the Gavitt Tipoff Games.
Already, the Wildcats have been embarrassed twice. Marquette has been humbled. Georgetown suffered a double-digit loss to a mid-major. Providence and Seton Hall have each stumbled twice. Xavier and Creighton have each lost at home.
Coming off of three straight losing seasons, St. John’s (3-0) was predicted to break through, and picked to finish fourth in the Big East preseason poll. Now, the conference could be even more wide open than it recently seemed.
“Of course we watch games, but we’re not worrying about anybody else in the Big East right now,” said Mustapha Heron, St. John’s leading scorer. “We’re not looking at anybody else. We’re just worrying about ourselves.”
The next two days should tell St. John’s how much it should worry.
Coming off a dominant win at Rutgers — in which St. John’s tied a school-record with 16 3-pointers — the Red Storm face one of the few true challenges of their non-conference schedule in the Legends Classic at Barclays Center, beginning with Monday night’s game against California (1-1). St. John’s will face Temple (4-0) or Virginia Commonwealth (3-0) the next day.
“I don’t think it matters who we play against. We can beat anybody as long as we play a good brand of basketball,” Heron said. “I think we’re in a good place, but we can’t get complacent.”
Non-conference play can be deceiving. Last season, St. John’s started 5-0, and wound up losing its first 11 Big East games. But last season, Heron was at Auburn.
Despite leading the Tigers in scoring during his first two seasons, the 6-foot-5 guard has looked even better in Queens. In two years at Auburn, Heron scored at least 25 points on three occasions. In three games at St. John’s he’s done it twice, and is averaging 22.7 points (8-of-14 3-pointers), while ranking second on the team with 6.3 rebounds.
When Shamorie Ponds led St. John’s, and the Big East, in scoring last season, the Brooklyn native accounted for nearly 27 percent of the team’s shots, with no teammate totaling more than 16 percent. This season, Heron and Ponds have each taken 40 shots through three games — shooting a combined 53.8 percent from the field — with each player accounting for roughly 21 percent of the team’s shots.
“I think it’s clicking perfectly,” Heron said. “It’s definitely just as good, maybe better [than what I thought], because we’ve got good players, and interchangeable guys.”
Some are interchangeable. Some are irreplaceable.
“I’ve watched Mustapha all through high school, so I know him pretty well. He’s a really mature player,” coach Chris Mullin said after Friday’s win. “We talk about experience, it’s something you can’t teach. He practices like a pro. In the game, you kind of know what you’re going to get.”
