Lunardi's St. John's NCAA predictions

ST. JOHN'S: It seems way more than eight years since the Red Storm has been to the dance. Yet here they sit, 10-2 overall and No. 26 on the soon-to-be published InsideRPI. More importantly, the Johnnies were No. 36 on our mid-December S-Curve.



With neutral court victories over Siena and Temple, St. John's has a respectable non-conference profile. The real question is whether or not the Red Storm can manage a .500 mark in the deep Big East. They catch a little bit of a break with repeat games against underachieving Louisville, Pitt and DePaul, but still face an uphill battle to improve enough on last season's 6-12 conference mark.



NCAA ODDS: 40 percent
JOE'S PREDICTION: N.I.T.

http://insider.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?entryID=4781349&name=ncbexperts

ST. JOHN'S: It seems way more than eight years since the Red Storm has been to the dance. Yet here they sit, 10-2 overall and No. 26 on the soon-to-be published InsideRPI. More importantly, the Johnnies were No. 36 on our mid-December S-Curve.



With neutral court victories over Siena and Temple, St. John's has a respectable non-conference profile. The real question is whether or not the Red Storm can manage a .500 mark in the deep Big East. They catch a little bit of a break with repeat games against underachieving Louisville, Pitt and DePaul, but still face an uphill battle to improve enough on last season's 6-12 conference mark.



NCAA ODDS: 40 percent
JOE'S PREDICTION: N.I.T.

http://insider.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?entryID=4781349&name=ncbexperts

Pretty fair assessment by Lunardi.  Despite the early season success, I still have a hard time believing this is an NCAA Tournament team.  From top to bottom, I don't believe they have the talent to break .500 in the Big East.  Having said that, I'm hoping St. John's continues the upward trend and proves me wrong.

If they get off to a hot start in Big East play, then it could get really interesting around here.  First up is an away game against (13) Georgetown.  Probably not the ideal matchup considering (a) the team still sucks on the road and (b) they don't really have an answer for Monroe down low.  However, the next 4 games are against Providence, Louisville, Cincinnati, and DePaul.  If the team is able to take 3 of those 4 games and start the Big East season 3-2, then we'll all be interested to see how far it can go.

Has Monroe done anything against us? I know he was highly rated but he hasn't looked all that great the last few times I have seen him. This is a new team made up of upper classmen. Young teams don't win on the road. Experienced teams have a shot. We played pretty good a Duke. Georgetowns students are on break. This is a winnable game. 2-0 is a real possibility.

Like us GTown has no real home court advantage.

It would be a big lift to our confidence to get off to a quick start in the Big East.