Loss of Kennedy breaks Storm's hearts

St. John's nine remaining seniors struggled for four years to climb Mount Everest, weathered all the storms and criticism, not only adapted to a coaching change but thrived on it. And now, with the goal in sight -- a long-awaited NCAA Tournament bid this Sunday -- one guy, one brother, one fellow survivor, won't make the summit with them.

D.J. Kennedy made it to the last plateau before the peak experience for which he had worked so hard, but his right knee betrayed him in a torturous, twisting fall with 14:25 left in the first half of a 79-73 loss to Syracuse Thursday in the quarterfinals of the Big East Tournament.

His downcast teammates in the postgame locker room were pulling for him, vowing he would play next week in the NCAAs, as Justin Burrell said, "barring broken bones or [ligament] tears.''

But when the news came from the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan around 10 o'clock Thursday night, it was the worst-case scenario. An MRI exam showed Kennedy had suffered a torn right ACL that ended his season.

Not knowing his status after the game, none of his teammates wanted to admit it, but by their demeanor it seemed all knew in their sickened stomachs what the outcome was likely to be. Certainly, they knew it was bad the moment Kennedy went down and began waving for help to the bench at the opposite end of the floor as play swirled about him.

Burrell was the first teammate to reach him when play was whistled dead. He bent over Kennedy, who was in obvious pain, turned and shouted to the bench for help.

"I thought it was serious,'' Burrell said. "D.J., along with everybody on our team, would never lay on the court like that if it wasn't a serious injury. We see it as a sign of weakness. When he did that, we knew it was serious, and he needed attention.''

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After Kennedy was helped off with St. John's trailing 12-5 and looking overmatched by Syracuse's size, Steve Lavin went to a lineup often featuring three big men on the floor at the same time -- Burrell, Justin Brownlee and Sean Evans. They played valiantly throughout an exceptionally physical game and, along with the acrobatic shotmaking of Dwight Hardy, kept St. John's in it until the final minute.

"When we saw D.J. go down, we kept him in our heart, but we tried to get it out of our heads because you can't play with that on our minds,'' Burrell said. "We had to focus on the game, and he knows that.''

But when it was over, it was obvious everyone in St. John's locker room felt Kennedy's pain. "Tragic'' was the word that came to Brownlee's mind.

"Seeing him in that kind of pain and calling for help like he was, I just felt bad for him,'' Brownlee said. "D.J. is a friend, a brother. He's not only a teammate to me, and it just felt bad.''

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No one felt worse than Evans, who produced 11 points and 12 rebounds in his season-high 36 minutes. Choking back his emotion, Evans described the friendship he shares with Kennedy as a byproduct of their similar backgrounds when they arrived at St. John's, two Pennsylvania kids, Kennedy from Pittsburgh and Evans from Philadelphia.

"Going through a lot of the same things, just having to grind to get where we're at now,'' Evans said, "that bond just grew throughout the years having so much in common in so many ways. It just threw us together. I guess it was meant to be for me and D.J. to be so close. To see D.J. hurt, it hurts me.''