Word came out before the game that starting point guard, Malik Boothe, was going to miss the game with a groin injury suffered in their previous game against Georgetown. Many people secretly smiled thinking this was the chance for Dwight Hardy to crack the starting lineup giving the Red Storm a much more potent scoring attack. Wrong. Norm Roberts went with freshman point guard Malik 2.0 Stith instead. In addition to starting Stith, Coach Roberts also started Justin Brownlee along side Sean Evans in the front court.
The Johnnies came out hot feeding off the confident play of Paris Horne and jumped out to a 9-3 lead. The team looked like it was going to romp the sloppy and inferior Providence squad but then it became all too familiar to St. John’s fans. The team lost the lead soon after the first media time out as Providence took a 1 point advantage. The game remained close for most of the first half until St. John’s started to pull away again building a 9 point lead with 2 minutes before halftime. However the careless play of the Red Storm allowed Providence to go on a 10-2 run to close the half going into the locker room trailing by 1 point.
There were many things in the first half that left you asking why?
-Why did you not call a timeout to address how you wanted to handle the 2-1-2 trap press Providence using?
-Why was Justin Burrell assisting Malik Stith bringing up the ball in the press? Why not another guard?
-Why the large rotation? Conference play is not the time to test things out.
-Why did we not establish any type of post game in the half court offense?
St. John’s has done a pretty good job of coming out of the locker room ready to play in the 2nd half this season. So there was some confidence that the coaching staff would address the 12 points off of turnovers that were scored against the Red Storm or the fact they didn’t score off of any offensive rebounds.
The 2nd half left St. John’s fans in shock as the Red Storm squandered an 8 point lead to lose the game by 15 points.
A pessimistic version of Murphy’s Law, everything that could have went wrong did go wrong. St. John’s was still bothered by Providence’s trap pressure, there was no consistent rotations, and our defensive breakdowns were too frequent.
The team looked ill prepared and misguided for almost all 40 minutes of play. There were no adjustments made to deal with the 3/4 court pressure by Keno Davis’ squad that caused St. John’s to turn the ball over 22 times.
The front court minutes were very scattered, the half court sets were ineffective, and clock management wasn’t a priority. This was a very winnable game that was over looked. You’d expect this from a team filled with freshman but not juniors. Learning experiences should long be over with.
Deep breathe…
Onto to Louisville for a must win game on the road. (Sigh)
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