Post Game - St. John's vs. Temple

55-48 Win !

Lets here some reactions:

You guys have a lot of depth, and that works greatly to your advantage. Having 9 or 10 guys that can come in fresh through 40 minutes and contribute means a lot.

All the credit goes to you guys, you wore us down.

Good luck the rest of the way.

Owlified

55-48 Win !

Lets here some reactions:

Fantastic weekend for Norm Roberts and all of the players.  I predicted the team would go 1-4 over the next 5 games and they have already made me look stupid.  And I'm a happier man for it.

Congrats to the team and Norm!!!  A great weekend that will def build confidence moving forward.

Looks like the defense stepped it up these last two games...

Thanks Owlified   Best of luck the rest of the way

You guys have a lot of depth, and that works greatly to your advantage. Having 9 or 10 guys that can come in fresh through 40 minutes and contribute means a lot.

All the credit goes to you guys, you wore us down.

Good luck the rest of the way.

Owlified

Ugly win but I'll take it. I'm mobile I'll much more in depth write up when I get home. Even though it was ugly it's a great win and many positive signs. Burrell played great!

Burrell played great!

That's good to hear.  Did he matchup with Allen all night?

Any details are great.  Was on a plane during gametime so couldn't listen in.

5-0...its been a while.

Hardy is the cot damn GOODS!

That is all.

A little momentum going into Duke next week? I think so.

AP release

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -D.J. Kennedy scored 15 points as St. John's beat Temple 55-48 in the finale of the Philly Hoop Group Classic on Saturday night.

Dwight Hardy added 11 points for the Red Storm (5-0). St. John's is off to its first 5-0 start since the 2002-03 season.

After trailing 22-21 at halftime, the Red Storm started the second half with a 13-2 run to take a 34-24 lead with 14:56 left in the game. Hardy had eight points during the run.

The Owls cut the lead to four after a dunk from Ramone Moore made the score 45-41 with 6:39 remaining, but Temple was outscored 14-3 the rest of the way, and was held scoreless for 5 minutes.

Temple (4-2) was led by Moore, who scored 10 points. Lavoy Allen and Rahlir Jefferson chipped in with nine points apiece.

St. John's got to the free-throw line 30 times, while Temple shot only 15 free throws.
 

You guys have a lot of depth, and that works greatly to your advantage. Having 9 or 10 guys that can come in fresh through 40 minutes and contribute means a lot.

All the credit goes to you guys, you wore us down.

Good luck the rest of the way.

Owlified

Thanks a lot for posting, chatting and the compliments.

You guys have had a lot to be proud of as a program for the last few years!

Sounded like we won ugly but we got (essentially) a road win against a quality opponent.  Best start of the Norm era, and some real signs of life!  Hopefully the media and recruits take some notice and we can keep this going!

Good teams win close games.

Temple is the class of the A10.
Over the last 20 years, they've been
a strong, deep and prepared program.

I remember for pulling them when they had
Mark Jackson's very large younger brother.

A great w for our program, and no matter
what any box score says this was a road game.

Temple is Philly, and We Are...

Good teams win close games.

Temple is the class of the A10.
Over the last 20 years, they've been
a strong, deep and prepared program.

I remember pulling them when they had
Mark Jackson very large younger brother.

A great w for our program, and no matter
what any box score says this was a road game.

Temple is Philly, and We Are...

Mark Jackson's younger brother played for Louisville.

Temple had Marc Jackson, who played in the NBA for a few years and had some great fantasy runs on the Warriors.

Great rebounding by Sean Evans down the stretch

I am VERY optimistic.  Great weekend.  Can these games please get on cable tv asap?

I am VERY optimistic.  Great weekend.  Can these games please get on cable tv asap?

From this point on almost every game is on TV, except Fordham & Bryant

http://collegehoopsnet.com/college-hoops-saturday-recap-louisville-falls-las-vegas-167753

1. St. John's had a very good weekend in Philly. The Red Storm are now 5-0 following wins over Siena and Temple in the Philly Hoop Group Classic. Saturday's 55-48 win over the Owls wasn't pretty (halftime score: 22-21 Owls) but the Red Storm were able to rely on their defense to pull through in the end. They've improved offensively but with the number of bodies at Norm Roberts' disposal they're going to win games with their depth and defense; don't expect them to be the second coming of the Phoenix Suns.

St. John's held Temple to 28.1% from the field and 3-for-14 from behind the arc while also finishing the night a +3 in rebounding margin, which made up for a bad night taking care of the basketball (17 turnovers). D.J. Kennedy (15 points) and Dwight Hardy (11 points in 21 minutes), along with Paris Horne, will be the guys who lead the way in the scoring column. If everyone understands and accepts their roles the Red Storm can only get better as the season progresses.

 

I agree with the assessment above by CHN.

I'll make some more notes than I did in the post game Bart's Breakdown column.

Norm didn't make a substitution at the first media timeout. He left all 5 starters in which at the time made me a very happy man. He tried to let them get a rhythm out there and I really thought we were gonna open the flood gates on Temple. We were getting any and every look we wanted but the ball wouldn't go in the hoop. Good looking misses and also easy missed layups/putbacks.

Temple couldn't get anything going offensively and they were settling for deep threes. Eventually they hit one.

Then Stith and Hardy were set to check in. Horne had a foul so I figured he was coming out and Boothe wasn't doing much so Stith for the spark. When the two were set to check in Norm also got Brownlee off the bench for Evans.

Stith, Hardy, DJ, Brownlee, and Burrell. I didn't mind this look especially when Burrell was playing very well and DJ is our rock.

Less than a minute later Omari went in for DJ.

So now we had 4 new guys on the court + Burrell.

Somewhere along the lines Dele came in Burrell but the 4 new guys were on the floor together for a solid 5-6 min on the game clock. This is where we let things fall apart.

5 starters checked back in around 9 min mark.

I never really lost confidence in this game because we were definitely more talented than they were but I was hoping we didn't dig ourselves too deep.

We came out at halftime looking sharp and focused.

The first three Hardy hit he took the ball down himself up the court stopped and popped at the top of the key. Swish! The 2nd one he rolled off a nice screen.

Towards the end of the game we had some bonehead moves. We allowed ourselves to get trapped in the backcourt and had some costly turnovers. We also stalled out completely on offense running what I like to call the "Geno" when we wait till there is less than 10 seconds left on the shot clock to start running anything.

Norm went with Boothe down the stretch. He was our most solid ball handler the entire game. He also subbed Hardy/Horne Offense/Defense towards the end which I liked. Horne struggled from the FT line. We also went 4 guards when Temple shot FT's at the end with Burrell and Kennedy down at the blocks in case they fouled us.

Going back to the early goings in the game the offense looked sharp. We actually ran some different sets for different guys and we looked good. If a few shots went down early this game would have been a blow out.

A negative is that we did absolutely jack coming out of timeouts. We need to develop a couple of sideline out of bounds plays(For both sides of the court). We looked miserable at crucial times in the game and luckily it didn't come back to bite us.

All in all the guys played really tough, no seriously they did. I was really glad I made the trip down to Philly. This team has some real potential and I can see us gelling a bit.

I have watch any games but 4 assist last games has to be a red flag