Young, scrappy St. John's edges UCLA
However often the cliché "freshman mistake" might apply to St. John's, which again relied almost exclusively on five first-year players to grind out a 66-63 non-conference victory over UCLA Saturday, it must be said that those young fellows play hard.
The kindest word that might be applied to the often chaotic, decidedly messy game would be "unpolished." UCLA committed 16 turnovers, St. John's 11. In terms of marksmanship, both teams were scattershot; St. John's converted 37 percent of its field goals, UCLA 36.
But the Red Storm, its resolve repeatedly tested in this 11-16 season in which coach Steve Lavin mostly has been absent while recovering from successful prostate cancer surgery, persevered against Lavin's former team.
"I like the pluck that our players are showing," said Lavin, who joined the 7,305 spectators at Madison Square Garden, watching from a skybox. "They have confidence and aggressiveness and that's what's most important, because they're young."
UCLA also fielded mostly underclassmen -- a freshman and three sophomores saw action alongside two seniors -- so the game offered a glimpse of future possibilities as opposed to an echo of the two schools' storied basketball pasts. Because of UCLA's 11 NCAA championships and St. John's place among the nation's Top 10 colleges in all-time victories and winning percentage, St. John's assistant Mike Dunlap reasonably could call Saturday "a national game; people are paying attention."
But UCLA (15-12) has no better chance of participating in March Madness this year than St. John's does. The afternoon was an exercise in fortitude and acquired knowledge.
"The fact of the matter," Dunlap said of a 30-point loss four days earlier, "is that we didn't feel good about the Seton Hall game and tried to do something about it."
St. John's trailed on only three brief occasions, and never by more than two points. But it was a one-minute span with less than eight minutes to play that summarized St. John's relentless bent and the game's general tone.
UCLA had pulled within 54-53 when 6-5 forward Sir'Dominic Pointer, knocked down in a scramble under the basket, corralled a rebound while still on his seat, then bounced up to slam down a dunk on a missed shot by Moe Harkless. That not only energized the crowd and Pointer's teammates but led to St. John's subsequent offensive trip, which featured three offensive attempts before Phil Greene at last scored on a putback.
"That was one of the phases where we had to gang-tackle," Dunlap said, and St. John's demonstrated by taking 19 of its 39 rebounds on the offensive end.
"That's what jumps out at you," UCLA coach Ben Howland said. "That's just way too many offensive rebounds" allowed by his team.
Greene, who finished with 11 points, and D'Angelo Harrison, who led all scorers with 22, traded field goals the rest of the way to keep UCLA at bay. Pointer scored 13 and Harkless 10.
"Just stay with it, get the ball," Pointer said of that sitting-down rebound as well as his team's persistence. "I think we play scrappier than they do."
Harkless, who led St. John's with 12 rebounds, said "you've just got to keep working every play, and that's what we did. It's been up and down the whole season, but you've just got to keep playing harder than the other team, and everything will take care of itself."
Freshman pluck applies.
