St. John's falls to Xavier after rallying from 11-point deficit in second half
St. John's Red Storm guard Daniss Jenkins handles the ball during a college basketball game against the Xavier Musketeers on Wednesday at Cintas Center in Cincinnati. Credit: AP/Joe Robbins
CINCINNATI — The St. John’s team everyone expected to see on Wednesday night finally showed up about seven minutes into the second half. It was early enough to turn its Big East matchup with Xavier into a nail-biter, but too late to actually pull out a conference road win.
The Red Storm rallied from 11 points down with about 13 minutes left and managed to tie it in the final four minutes. However, by that time they needed defensive stops and just couldn’t get them.
Xavier closed the game by scoring 13 of the final 15 points in an 88-77 win at Cintas Center. St. John’s was 1-for-5 with a turnover during that same stretch and Daniss Jenkins suggested “fatigue” from the comeback may have played a role.
The Red Storm is now 2-9 all-time in the Musketeers’ arena. Its only lead Wednesday was 2-0.
“They were just better,” Storm coach Rick Pitino said. “They win 85% of their games here. They almost beat Houston here. They almost beat Connecticut here. They’re a great home team . . . I’ve said this all along: we’re not a great team. We’re a hard-working team that’s getting better.”
The Red Storm (13-8, 5-5) play defending national champion and No. 1-ranked Connecticut on Saturday and do not go into the much-anticipated showdown with momentum, but rather having lost four of five.
Jenkins had 25 points on 11-for-17 shooting and kept the Storm from falling out of contention with 15 of his points in the first half. Joel Soriano had 21 points on 8-for-14 shooting to go with 15 rebounds. The rest of the Storm shot a miserable 8-for-32.
“We’re a team that has two really good players and they showed it — DJ and Soriano — and the rest of the guys . . . we didn’t get a whole lot out of our other guys tonight,” Pitino said.
Jordan Dingle, who has been battling strep throat, had 12 points off the bench for St. John’s.
Desmond Claude and Quincy Olivari each tallied 23 points for Xavier (11-10, 5-5).
The Storm gave up 28 fastbreak points, lost the rebounding battle 44-34 and were limited in the comeback attempt because players got into foul trouble.
“In order to beat a team like Xavier on the road, you’ve got to give a great performance and we certainly didn’t defensively tonight,” Pitino said.
Down 58-47 after Dailyn Swain stripped Jenkins and took it the length of the floor for a dunk with 13:10 to play, St. John’s mounted its charge. A Jenkins pull-up with 3:59 to go tied it at 73 and a pair of Chris Ledlum free throws knotted it at 75 with 3:02 left.
Claude made a pair of free throws for a two-point Xavier lead, then came a crushing stretch for St. John’s.
Jenkins missed a three-pointer for the lead. On the other end, Ledlum came up with a block on Claude, but Swain got to the loose ball first and found Olivari for an open corner three-pointer with 1:57 left and an 80-75 edge.
“That was a key possession in the game right there,” Jenkins said. “We had the stop, there was a loose ball, we didn’t come up with it and they hit the three. It’s little things like that.”
“We didn’t come up with the loose-ball rebound and they did and scored,” Pitino said. “I’ve been in this game a long time — it always comes down to something you don’t expect.”
In the first half, St. John’s looked like a team that hadn’t played a game in a week even though it held five practices during the break. They missed eight layups, allowed six offensive rebounds, made just one of five three-point attempts and turned the ball over on 16% of their possessions. Five different Storm players picked up two fouls. So things could have been much worse than trailing 38-34 at the break.
While Jenkins scored his 15 points on 7-for-10 shooting the rest of the Storm shot 5-for-24.
Ayo to miss rest of season. Red Storm sophomore forward Sadiku Ibine Ayo — one of the three Iona players who transferred to St. John’s after coach Rick Pitino left the Gaels to become the Storm coach — had knee surgery and will miss the rest of the season, school officials said. Ayo made the last of his five appearances this season in the Dec. 30 win over Hofstra and played an aggregate 20 minutes. . . . Senior guard Nahiem Alleyne was back in action Wednesday night for the first time since he suffered a sprained ankle that forced him from the Jan. 20 loss to Marquette. Alleyne only missed last week’s win over Villanova at the Garden.
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
