Hot St. John's has good shot at NCAA bid

If this were Selection Thursday, for the first time in nine years it would be impossible for the NCAA Tournament committee not to include St. John's in the field. With five games remaining in the regular season, Steve Lavin has authored a turnaround that might be the most remarkable coaching achievement of this season.

When Lavin left ESPN to take charge of a floundering Red Storm program that had long ceased being relevant on the New York stage, he inherited a group of nine seniors who never had finished better than 6-12 in Big East play. St. John's promising start seemed to come off the tracks in back-to-back December losses to St. Bonaventure and Fordham, but after every misstep, it seems Lavin's team makes a quantum leap forward.

The pollsters barely have taken notice. Of the top 10 teams in the Big East, St. John's is the only one that hasn't appeared in the Top 25 of either the AP or ESPN/USA Today rankings.

But after winning five of its past six games, including blowouts of then-No. 3 Duke and then-No. 9 Connecticut and a sweep of Big East road games against Cincinnati and Marquette, the Red Storm (16-9, 8-5 Big East) is highly ranked where it counts. St. John's is 15th in the RPI rankings used by the selection committee to shape the expanded 68-team field and is rated No. 1 in strength of schedule, according to a consensus of services that duplicate the NCAA's formula.

ESPN "bracketologist" Joe Lunardi, who is considered an expert on the subject, had St. John's in the tournament as a seventh seed in the Southeast Region in the bracket he issued Monday before the Red Storm defeated Marquette Tuesday night. That victory put St. John's one win away from clinching a .500 record in the Big East and matching last season's total of 17 wins in 33 games.

The best indication of how far St. John's has come might be the anticipation of its next game against No. 4 Pitt Saturday afternoon at Madison Square Garden. In its past two Garden appearances, the Red Storm beat Duke by 15 points and UConn by 17. Despite its lofty ranking, Pitt could find itself on the wrong end of the same stick that punctured Duke and UConn.

Yes, St. John's is for real, and so is senior guard Dwight Hardy, who has stepped up his game to average 25.3 points during the Red Storm's recent six-game surge. A year ago, Hardy was coming off the bench, settling for nothing but long jumpers and being streaky as a result.

After Hardy's 28-point effort at Marquette, Lavin said, "Dwight is the best pure shooter I've coached. He's playing with confidence. It looks like he can drop-kick the ball in the Atlantic Ocean."

The beauty of what Lavin has done is that, while he built up Hardy for his long-range marksmanship, he also got him to change his game and look to go to the basket first while learning the patience to pick his spots from three-point range. Mix in Lavin's full-court pressure defense, and you have the makings of a tournament team.

Selection Sunday is a little more than three weeks away, but it will be an upset now if St. John's name doesn't land in the bracket.