DAYTON, Ohio — So the skeptics were spot-on. The doubters had their day. There were plenty of voices whispering — some screaming — that St. John’s didn’t deserve to be anywhere near the NCAA Tournament, not as the 68th pick, not as the 168th pick.
Then the Johnnies went out and proved every one of them right across 40 disturbing, dispiriting minutes of basketball.
“Across the board,” coach Chris Mullin said when it was over. “Probably our worst game of the year.”
Arizona State didn’t just beat the Johnnies, 74-65 at University of Dayton Arena Wednesday night, didn’t just eliminate them from the tournament, end their season. The Sun Devils owned the Red Storm. Forget the cosmetic comeback across the game’s final 10 minutes: The Devils bullied the Johnnies, pushed them around, both ends of the floor.
There was a time this team prided itself on its toughness, insisted that was a part of its very DNA. That was all left back in Jamaica. In truth, it vanished sometime after the stirring Villanova win in February, when the Johnnies stormed back from 19 down and imposed their will on the Wildcats.
That resolve went missing almost immediately. They never got it back as they seemed almost hell-bent on giving the selection committee reasons to exclude them. And then, Wednesday, offered a two-hour closing argument for why they didn’t really belong.
“I was surprised,” Mullin said. “When things aren’t going great, you have to work through it. And we never seemed to.”
It is a loss, and a season that leaves this program shrouded in uncertainty. This was supposed to be the year St. John’s announced itself as a freshly restored member of the sport’s elite. It wasn’t supposed to simply participate in the NCAAs, but stick around awhile.
Instead, St. John’s never even got to sniff the main draw.
And now? Shamorie Ponds — one of the few Johnnies who represented himself well Wednesday (25 points) — seems almost certain to test the NBA. Marvin Clark II will graduate. One of the program’s most devastating losses would be if Nebraska does as it’s expected to do and hires Fred Hoiberg and Hoiberg is able to woo his old recruiting-master wingman at Iowa State, Matt Abdelmassih, away from Mullin’s staff.
And what of Mullin himself? It is all but impossible to imagine St. John’s even considering turning up the griddle under his coaching seat, even if this team didn’t meet anyone’s expectations. Still, any other coach with any other name would absolutely see the pressure on him ratcheted up after this team flamed out as it did, with a new athletic director on board. And you also wonder how many years of fight Mullin has left in him.
“I just wish we could have played better tonight,” he said. “I wanted them to move on. I do think if we would have played a good game, we could give people trouble. We showed that. It just wasn’t meant to be tonight.”
That was true for so many reasons. Two of the Johnnies’ key players, Clark and Mustapha Heron, shot an unsightly 1-for-17 for the field, Clark finishing out his career with a stinging goose egg on his ledger, Heron adding the indignity of a hat trick of missed foul shots after he was fouled shooting a 3 early in the second half. It was easily the worst games of both of their seasons, at the absolute worst time.
The offense was sickly from the start, and even when the Sun Devils begged the Johnnies to stay in the game it never got better, the shooting — 32 percent overall, 25 percent from 3, 56 percent from the line — was a terrible eyesore.
“We just didn’t hit shots,” Ponds said glumly. “I felt like we played good defensively down the stretch, but we just couldn’t hit a shot.”
Truth be told, the Johnnies were extremely fortunate to only trail by 13 at the half. Arizona State coach Bobby Hurley handed them a gift pair of free throws by somehow drawing a technical foul with his team holding a 15-point lead.
The pity is, it wouldn’t have taken anywhere near a perfect performance, just a passable one, to keep this one close. In many ways, Arizona State is a mirror image of St. John’s, lots of interesting pieces that worked on some nights and didn’t on some others and could be alternately fascinating and frustrating in the same game.
The Devils survive to frustrate their fans for another day. The Johnnies aren’t so lucky. It is doubtful that Buffalo lost any sleep watching this artless mess for 40 minutes, awaiting the winner. It was a shame either team had to win.
