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Johnnies Set Sail to Take on Pirates

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Even with all the attention surrounding the #15 St. John’s Red Storm, players say only a few small things have changed.

“I’m sitting in class, the girl I’ve been interested in for the whole semester kind of gives me a smile that on a different day when I walk in, probably wouldn’t have gotten one before,” forward Justin Burrell joked. “The lunch lady gave me a couple extra fries in the bottom of the bag. Stuff like that.”

The Johnnies take their 6-game win streak on the road to Seton Hall on Thursday night. (Photo: Icon/SMI)

That relaxed, “take-things-as-they-come” attitude continues to pervade the St. John’s locker room and keep them from being caught up in the glitz and glamour that comes with being the 15th ranked team in the country.

After moving up 10 spots in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches’ Poll this past week, the Johnnies are heavily favored in their two remaining regular season games, Thursday at Seton Hall and Saturday versus South Florida at Carnesecca Arena.

These two final regular season games force the Red Storm to switch gears. Coming off an important road win over #14 Villanova, the Red Storm must take care of business against two sub-.500 opponents to secure a double-bye in the Big East Tournament.

“These games are actually harder,” Burrell said. “If you see throughout college basketball when a team that…is supposed to win a game, if you see those games, it’s sometimes close because teams overlook or don’t come out with the same intensity.”

Thursday’s match-up with Seton Hall at the Prudential Center will be an interesting one for St. John’s because, though the Pirates have won just five Big East games (with four of those wins coming over DePaul, Rutgers, Providence, and USF), they traveled to the Carrier Dome in late January and beat Syracuse by 22 points.

“We’re a real mature team. In this league, anyone can beat anyone,” said senior forward Sean Evans.  “We’re going to go in there, same focus as if we were playing the number one team in the conference or the last place team in the conference.”

Senior guard Jeremy Hazell, who missed 13 games for the Pirates this year with a broken bone in his left wrist, is a volume shooter who can put points up in a hurry. Now healthy, Hazell is averaging 18.5 points per game, including outbursts of 28 points in their big win at Syracuse, and another 28 early in the year in a win over Cornell.

Last year at Carnesecca Arena, Hazell dropped 10 points on 4/6 shooting in the first 12 minutes before leaving the game with a deep cut in his right hand. Despite Hazell’s absence, Seton Hall won 59-50 behind 16 points from forward Jeff Robinson.

Along with Hazell, junior forward Herb Pope can play impact basketball on the inside, averaging almost a double-double, with 10 points and 8.2 rebounds per game. Guarding Pope, who also happens to be a friend of Justin Burrell’s off the court, will be the duty of St. John’s Big 3 forwards: Brownlee, Burrell, and the reemerging Sean Evans.

“To this point, there hasn’t been any indication of a letdown,” said Coach Steve Lavin. “I think, in a lot of our losses, it was more confidence, or not understanding how to salt a victory away, or not counter-punching when a team made a run on us and the inability to come back late in a game.”

“Every game we come out, we’re going to try to win and our goal is to win a national championship, as is any other college team in the country.” -Sean Evans

It seems the Johnnies have struck a balance between a short term vision and clear recognition of long term goals. Lavin has called every game “the most important game of the year”, but the team is still cognizant of their national rank and NCAA Tournament prospects.

“We’ve worked hard to put ourselves in this position and we don’t ever want to forget the brick and mortar, the fundamentals, and the degrees of focus that it took to get to this point,” said Lavin.

And as the Red Storm rolls into Newark Thursday night, they will be bringing the brick and mortar, hoping to build their way to a national title run.

“We don’t play just to play, we play to win,” said Evans. “Every game we come out, we’re going to try to win and our goal is to win a national championship, as is any other college team in the country.”

Past & Present Celebrate Their Future

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St. John’s basketball has long been defined by its rich and deep tradition.  It comes as no surprise when Johnnies greats are able to take their skills to the next level.  At last month’s graduation ceremony on the Queens campus, those in attendance got to see one Johnny take the next step toward a potential pro career, while witnessing a former Red Storm hero walk across the stage.

Walter Berry on the legendary cover of Sports Illustrated during the illustrious 1985 season.
Yes, Red Storm senior Anthony Mason Jr. completed his course of study. But joining him was Walter “The Truth” Berry, who helped lead the Johnnies to their most recent Final Four back in 1985.  Berry took advantage of the online classes offered by St. John’s to finish his program in liberal studies after playing professionally in Europe in a career that spanned three decades.  Berry was drafted by the Portland Trail Blazers in 1986, but became a bigger star overseas.

Mason has since worked out with the Miami Heat, Milwaukee Bucks, and Indiana Pacers in the hopes of potentially being drafted or signing a free agent contract. Unfortunately, Mase’s five-year career with the Red Storm that was unfortunately marred by injuries over his final three seasons.  His statistics were not as gaudy as most Johnnies fans would have hoped, but Mason provided veteran leadership and an irreplaceable spark in former coach Norm Roberts’ lineup.

Arguably, Mason’s defining moment in a St. John’s uniform came at the end of the 2007-08 season, when his 3-pointer with 1.5 seconds left gave St. John’s a dramatic 65-62 victory over Seton Hall at Carnesecca Arena; a win that became even more dramatic when Jeremy Hazell’s near-70-footer that would have tied it immediately after Mason’s trifecta gave the Johnnies the lead was disallowed by the officials.

Regardless of where the road of life takes both of these great players, Walter Berry and Anthony Mason Jr. have one thing in common that can never be taken from them: Their place in the long-standing and tradition-rich history of St. John’s basketball.

Jaden Daly is currently a freelance broadcaster and the former play-by-play voice of St. John’s basketball on WSJU Radio from 2007-2009. You can also find Daly on his own blog A Daly Dose of Hoops and Twitter at, @JadenDaly.

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Carnesecca Curse is Killed

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NEW YORK — Things couldn’t have been any bleaker for Seton Hall.

There was a 20-minute delay at the start because of a broken shot clock. The Pirates were on the road, where they hadn’t won yet in the Big East. They were playing St. John’s at Carnesecca Arena rather than Madison Square Garden. Their backup point guard and senior leader was out with a wrist injury. Their leading scorer injured his shooting hand 12 minutes into the game.

That’s right. They won.

Jeff Robinson had 16 points and nine rebounds to lead Seton Hall to a 59-50 victory over St. John’s on Wednesday night.

Bobby Gonzalez finally got the monkey off his back that he couldn't win in Carnesecca Arena. (Icon SMI)
“This is one of my favorite wins of my lifetime,” Pirates coach Bobby Gonzalez said. “We beat Florida in the NCAAs when I was at Manhattan. We beat Louisville here against Rick Pitino, an idol of mine. But this ranks up there. We got 15 wins and are tied for eighth in the conference. It was our first road win. There were so many things. We proved we could play without Jeremy (Hazell) and Eugene (Harvey). We won a game at Carnesecca Arena over a metropolitan area rival. This was big. This was special. They’ll remember this for a long time.”

Hazell, the Big East’s second-leading scorer at 22.4 points per game, suffered a deep cut between fingers on his shooting hand 12 minutes into the game and never returned. He scored the first eight points of the game for Seton Hall (15-9, 6-7) and finished with 10.

Hazell didn’t know he was bleeding and continued to play with a trail of blood following him up and down the court for a couple of trips. At a stoppage, one of the officials noticed the blood and called for it to be cleaned up. That’s when Hazell, and everyone else, realized he was bleeding.

“He doesn’t know how it happened,” Gonzalez said of Hazell, who was unavailable after the game as he was being tended to by the trainer. “He was stitched up. We’ll see the doctor tomorrow and figure out what happens from there. I’m going to church and pray a little bit.”

Robinson picked up for Hazell, even emulating him from 3-point range.

The 6-foot-6 junior transfer from Memphis came into the game 0 for 7 from 3-point range and hadn’t even attempted one since Jan. 21. He made 2 of 3 and finished one point off his season high.

“I knew at some point he would make a 3. It’s the law of averages,” Gonzalez said. “I didn’t think he’d make two in a row.”

Robinson, who scored the first five points, including his second 3, of a 9-1 run that gave the Pirates a 49-35 lead with 5:57 left, was working on that shot recently.

“I don’t know, I just felt confident and I just took the shots,” he said. “I’ve been working a lot. I’ve been coming in the gym, shooting a lot on my own to get prepared for this game. … I started off slow from 3 but I’ve been working on it and it paid off in this game.”

Robinson made sure his teammates knew they could win even without Hazell.

“We huddled up, the five that was on the court, and we said `Guys, we don’t have Jeremy on this one so we’ve got to come together, get stops and play hard.”

Sean Evans, who had a total of six points in his last three games, had 14 points for the Red Storm (14-11, 4-9), who like Seton Hall came in on a two-game winning streak.

St. John’s, which missed its first 11 3-point attempts, finished with a season-low point total.

“There’ll be no pity party. They played better than us and beat us and we’ll move on to the next one,” said St. John’s coach Norm Roberts, who heard chant of “Fire Roberts” in the final minutes. “Sometimes you want something too bad. At times we got tight and didn’t make it happen. It just didn’t happen for us.”

Courtesy of Associated Press

Streaking Into Carnesecca

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Ambiance: Andrea True Connection, More, More More (video link, pops up in a new window)

Seton Hall vs. St. John’s is a rivalry that has gotten a little spicier in the recent years, with Bobby Gonzalez’ ego demanding a bigger stage when his Pirates are the road team (he wants the game to be played in Madison Square Garden) and with St. John’s refusal to acknowledge his complaints. The personalities of the coaches – one quiet and humble, the other demonstrative and brash – come into play, as does the competition over the New York area talent that doesn’t go to Villanova, Pittsburgh, or West Virginia.

So basically, this is a game of two mangy dogs scrapping over some bones, looking to mark some territory. So be it. Both teams come off of two wins. Each has beaten Notre Dame – the Hall beat them in Newark, St. John’s beat them in Indiana. St. John’s enjoyed a home win over the Louisville Cardinals, and Seton Hall hosted the DePaul Blue Demons for a win that should have been easier.

The Hall play so fast that one would think their offense is great, and they give up so many points that one would think their defense is abysmal. The defense is certainly bad; but the offense isn’t very good either. If you hold the possessions equal, they would be giving up about the same scoring margin as St. John’s does. Which explains why their record is about the same as St. John’s. But their shooting is terrible, even with Jeremy Hazell.  They’re not particularly adept rebounders on either end.  They do not draw fouls, but the foul the other team a fair amount.  In fact, everything points to the Pirates being a terrible basketball team…

Except they do not cheat themselves by turning the ball over.  Though it looks like their turnovers are high because they play a fast game, they squeeze more shots out of their pace than most other teams would.  They don’t get in bad spots before putting up a shot, they don’t get the ball stolen (though Eugene Harvey has some bad moments in ball protection), and they get an okay number of steals in a game.  If a team always has a chance to put up a shot, they have more of a chance to score points.  It’s a delicate balance with Seton Hall, trying to win without winning the free throw shooting battle or the battle of the boards; but if they finish every possession with an attempt, they always stand a chance of surprising their opponents.

Both the Red Storm and the Pirates want to keep up the winning ways.  Who will win the clash in Carnesecca? Which team will step out of the league basement?

Game Information

Tip Off: 7:30 PM, Wednesday, February 17
Location: Carnesecca Arena
TV: MSG+
Radio: Bloomberg 1130/ WSJU

Team Reviews

Seton Hall (14-9, 5-7)

20 PG Eugene Harvey SR 6’0 184: 8.1 ppg* 4.7 apg

2 G Keon Lawrence JR 6’2 177: 5.2 ppg* 2.1 apg* 2.6 rpg

12 G Jeremy Hazell JR 6’5 188: 22.4 ppg* 3.3 rpg* 1.9 spg* 35.7% 3PT

32 F Jeff Robinson JR 6’6 230: 10.1 ppg* 5.4 rpg* 52.6% FG

15 F Herb Pope SR 6’8 236: 11.4 ppg* 11 rpg* 1.9 bpg* 42.4% FT

Bench

10 PG Jordan Theodore SO 6’0 170: 24 mpg* 8 ppg* 3.3 apg* 1.9 spg

23 F Robert “Stix” Mitchell JR 6’6 180: 21.7 mpg* 8.8 ppg* 4.2 rpg

22 G Jamel Jackson JR 6’3 202: 12.5 mpg* 5.9 ppg* 39.3% 3PT

25 F Ferrakhon Hall FR 6’8 220: 11.286 mpg* 3.2 ppg* 2.1 rpg

Jeremy Hazell has been a real star in conference play.  In fact, his game’s been so good that it highlights how mediocre the supporting cast has been.  He can get to the basket a little and get his shot off seemingly anywhere after halfcourt.  Of course, he has no conscience and could use to learn the word “judicious”, but he’s the team’s best player… even if he takes a Harangody-level percentage of his team’s shots without a hint of a pass attempt.

Eugene “Nunu” Harvey has improved his shooting, and despite being yanked in and out of the lineup, has been a decent point guard for the Hall.  His turnovers are high on a team that is good about ball protection, though, so I can see why Gonzalez would take him out of games. Unfortunately, he splits time handling the ball not only with Jordan Theodore, who is a solid distributor but poor shooter, but also with Keon Lawrence.  The Newark native and transfer from Missouri has been a terribly errant shooter, a mediocre distributor with no real sign of improvement… but he averages 22 minutes per game for defensive purposes.

Up front the Pirates feature Herb Pope, a player who passes the eye test, but not the numbers test.  He’s a fantastic rebounder, but his scoring sense and ability leave a lot to be desired.  His free throw shooting is incredibly bad at 39.5%. If Seton Hall played in closer games, teams would employ a Hack-a-Herb strategy in the waning minutes.  Jeff Robinson has been crisp, strong on the offensive boards and efficient in his shooting.

With Jordan Theodore either starting or playing major bench minutes, let’s see who else comes off the sideline for the Pirates:

  • 3 games ago against Pitt, Jamel Jackson played 24 minutes off the bench;
  • 2 games ago Stix Mitchell played 18 minutes to lead bench players;
  • and in the last game against DePaul, Ferrakhon Hall logged 13 minutes off the bench.

In conclusion, Bobby Gonzalez spins a color wheel on the sidelines and when it lands on a player, he gets some run. He has been a bit mercurial with the rotation, and for a team that would seem to have such depth in the shooter Jamel Jackson and the size of John Garcia (is he injured?) and Melvyn Oliver (who has had conditioning problems), one would think a few more players would get minutes. But the Pirates only play 7 guys (sometimes 8 players) anything more than 8 minutes apiece.

St. John’s (14-10, 4-8)

3 PG Malik Boothe JR 5’9 188: 4.2 ppg* 2.2 apg

23 G Paris Horne JR 6’3 191: 8.1 ppg* 2.8 rpg* 35.9% 3PT

1 G-F DJ Kennedy JR 6’5 215: 14.9 ppg* 6.5 rpg* 3.3 apg* 34.4% 3PT* 1.3 spg

2 G-F Anthony Mason Jr. SR 6’7 210: 6.6 ppg* 4.7 rpg* 1.9 apg

5 F Sean Evans JR 6’8 255: 6.6 ppg* 5.9 rpg

Bench:

12 G Dwight Hardy JR 6′2 187: 22.9 mpg* 11.0 ppg* 40.3% 3PT

32 F Justin Brownlee JR 6′7 232: 19.9 mpg* 7.1 ppg* 5.3 rpg

24 F Justin Burrell JR 6’8 235: 18.7 mpg* 6.9 ppg* 3.6 rpg* 52% FG* 36.4% 3PT

31 PG Malik Stith FR 5’11 185: 12.3 mpg* 1.9 ppg* 1.4 apg

Coming off of a road win at Notre Dame, the Red Storm should brim with confidence.  Burrell’s scoring 8 points per game in conference, shooting 52%, and still only playing 18 minutes per game.  Will he be able to run with the go-go Seton Hall?  St. John’s needs to slow the game down to get him the ball, and run with DJ Kennedy/ Dwight Hardy. Anthony Mason’s shot and athleticism seems to be inching its way back.  And Malik Boothe has been hitting a few shots… the team’s weak spots seem to be improving over the course of the Big East season.  It might just be weak opponents, but there are promising signs.

Keys to the Game

Be Good With the Ball. Giving the Pirates more chances to score is a bad thing; their defense is poor and can be scored on, but only if the Red Storm gets the chance to score.  As well, A turnover gives the Hall a chance to score in transition, where they are dangerous.

If Hazell Has the Ball, It’s Probably Going Up. Defend Jeremy from the half court line.  He’s not looking to pass the ball; if the ball is in his hands, he’s probably looking to set up and shoot it.  Make him catch the ball out of shooting position; the whole team has to be cognizant of his presence.

Get Back on Defense. The Pirates will look to push the ball in transition and make the game into a fast-paced playground game.  If St. John’s gets back and defends them into a poor shot, they can get going right back the other way.

Keep Up the Aggressive Offense. Work the post.  Drive to the hoop.  Don’t just take threes, but know when an open three is there and nail it.  Seton Hall will send the other team to the line, but only if the other team is attacking their gaps.

Second Chances.  St. John’s can’t lose control of the boards – they have to get second chances for themselves and keep the SHU forwards from generating tip ins and second chance balls.

Prediction: Can the Johnnies make it three in a row against a weak Pirates squad? St. John’s 74, Seton Hall 72.

Transplanted New Yorker and now Midwesterner Peter a/k/a Pico writes for the East Coast Bias and the Church of Bracketology and for Johnny Jungle, doing the Calm Before the Storm posts. Pico is also on Twitter, @ECoastBias.