St. John's suffers the 'bad loss' it had hoped to avoid, falling to Providence
St. John's guard Lefteris Liotopoulos is fouled by Providence Friars forward Jamier Jones in the second half of a Big East men’s basketball game at Madison Square Garden on Saturday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
St. John’s already was in a tenuous spot before it arrived at the Garden on Saturday. Now the situation is worse. And it’s in danger of getting pretty bad pretty fast.
St. John’s had faced four non-conference opponents that are or have been nationally ranked and lost all four games despite holding a second-half lead in each. Not having that signature win going into Big East play wasn’t going to do them any favors in terms of NCAA Tournament positioning, but something reasonably favorable was still in reach with a great in-conference performance. What they needed to avoid was a so-called “bad loss.’’
But they couldn’t accomplish that, either. The Red Storm scored the game’s first 13 points and led by 10 twice in the second half, but Providence raced by them with a 14-3 run in the last three minutes and pinned them with a 77-71 defeat before 19,047.
For St. John’s (9-5, 2-1), it’s a hit that could leave a mark. Providence (7-7, 1-2) arrived with an NET ranking of 101, which makes this a Quad 3 loss — the so-called “bad loss.’’
Bad losses are a stain on any program’s NCAA Tournament resume, and Red Storm coach Rick Pitino put it succinctly when he said, “Now our backs are to the wall very early in the season.”
He added, “When I say ‘backs to the wall,’ it’s because our record’s not good [and] we lost at home. So it’s not a good situation, but we’ve got to dig out.”
They need to start digging quickly because the situation could quickly grow considerably worse. St. John’s will play at Butler on Tuesday and at Creighton on Saturday, and both have NET rankings in the top half of the Big East. If the Red Storm perform this week the way they did against the Friars, this could snowball into a three-game losing streak.
“Anybody in this league can beat us. Anybody,” Pitino said. “We had to play all-out to beat [last place] DePaul.”
Zuby Ejiofor again showed up for St. John’s in a big game, tying his career high with 33 points and adding a career-best 15 rebounds, 11 on the offensive glass, but his performance got wasted in a hail of bricks from his fellow starters. Joson Sanon was 1-for-12, Ian Jackson 1-for-8, Bryce Hopkins 3-for-13 and Oziyah Sellers 3-for-10 for a combined 8-for-43, including 2-for-20 from three-point range.
Providence outscored St. John’s 25-9 in the final 7:13, with Friars marksman Stefan Vaaks scoring 12 of those points. He finished with 15 of his 16 points in the second half, hitting four three-pointers.
The game-closing 14-3 run started with a four-point play when Dylan Darling fouled Vaaks as he sank a three-pointer.
Providence scored on each of its final six possessions, sometimes with the Red Storm failing to get back on defense or pull down a defensive rebound.
“Only one guy had it . . . Except for Zuby, every single player had their worst night of the season and it mushroomed, overflowing to the defensive end,” Pitino said. “I can live with the fact that you have an off night. I can’t live with the fact that you made those defensive mistakes at the end of the game.
“On a night when we had our worst offensive performance of the season, we had to be almost perfect defensively and, down the stretch, we were anything but perfect. And it was our veterans that made one mistake after another — [not] getting back in transition [and] with fouling a three-point shooter, which is insanity.”
St. John’s went ahead 62-52 with 7:52 remaining on Hopkins’ three-point play, making this the fourth time it led by double figures in the final 10 minutes of a game, only to lose.
“We’re going to lose games. We shouldn’t have lost tonight, but we’re going to lose games,” Pitino said. “This is not last year’s team. I said it all along: We have high hopes. But what I’m noticing right now is a team that has a lot of frailties, and it showed tonight.”
Pitino and his staff had earlier examined the possibility of signing a guard out of the G League, a loophole that some programs have used, but opted not to try to shore up the Red Storm’s lack of a true high-level point guard.
Asked if he might revisit the idea, he said, “I won’t revisit it . . . And by the way, the guys I was looking at I didn’t think were that good, that could turn it around and really make a big difference. So no, we’ll stick with what we have and hopefully get better.”
So as Pitino said, the Red Storm’s backs are to the wall now. Asked if there is an avenue out of this situation, his prescription was simple and obvious: “You’ve got to win.”
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.
