Garden to Jungle

The Worlds Most Famous Arena, Madison Square Garden is becoming a jungle with the newly ranked 23/25 St. Johns Red Storm basketball team.

If you have attended St. Johns games over the past years as a fan you were one of maybe 1,000 of the 6,000 even in attendance. The first Big East game 8 of the 10 seniors played was against Pittsburgh and the last Big East game 8 of the 10 seniors played was against Pittsburgh, three differences to note though.

First, attendance for the first game was 5,219. The last game attendance was 14,514. Second, the sea of red was a sea of red for the last game while the first game was a mere puddle. Lastly, St. John’s actually won this game and how nice of them to do it in front of their fans. The people who the players say are the reason for their success.

“First time we played it didn’t feel like the garden, I mean it was but not attendance now I can’t see two seats consecutively empty.” said senior forward Justin Burrell, “Other teams use to have more fans out there.”

Justin couldn’t have been anymore right. Screams of “Let’s go (insert other Big East team)” drowned out the faint sounds of “Let’s go Johhnies”. Avid fan TJ Acierno said security at the garden use to force the student section to sit down because there were only 15 people actually standing. Now the number of students, fans and alumni out number the amount of security in the section so the red storm flows loud and proud behind each basket.

“Having fans behind you gives us a little more of an edge” said senior guard Paris Horne when recollecting about his garden experience.

Sean Evans took a similar approach as Horne did. “We feed off the fans. It helps us play when fans help us with support.”

This year the garden has been a jungle of johnnies. It has been a Johnny Jungle and that doesn’t look to change anytime soon. With the rejuvenation of St. Johns basketball thanks to Head Coach Steve Lavin the garden will continue to rock harder then Carmelo Anthony and Amare Stoudemire could make it.

Sean Evans said that Coach Lavin has to be “the best Scrabble player ever” when talking about Lavin’s ways with words. Here’s a 14 point word that you can expect from St. Johns fans attendance at Madison Square Garden; Stability.