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“A Big Fish…” (Duke at St. John’s Recap; 02.03.18)

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Robert Cole/ALOST

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CBB: No. 4 Duke at St. John's (02.03.18)

 

akoiki-passport2 – by Adesina O. Koiki
A Lot of Sports Talk editor-in-chief

 

NEW YORK — Some of the perimeter moves that St. John’s guard Shamorie Ponds kept putting on the Duke defense throughout today’s game could have been described, affectionately, as disgusting. Mike Krzyzewski used that same exact word to describe the better part of his team’s performance, but with no hint of affection in sight.

Ponds weaved, drove and shot his way to 33 points, including 24 in the second half, as the Red Storm snapped an 11-game losing streak to pull off one of the biggest upsets of the college basketball season, defeating No. 4 Duke 81-77 in front of a sellout crowd at Madison Square Garden.

Though St. John’s’ poor run of results did not indicate that a win against the Blue Devils was anywhere near likely, at least on paper, the Red Storm had just come off going toe-to-toe with 6th-ranked Xavier before losing 73-68 to the Musketeers in Queens last Tuesday. Today, Ponds left no doubt that the Red Storm would finally pull off their season-defining win, scoring eight points in the first 3:07 of the second half to quickly erase his team’s seven-point halftime deficit.

Late in the second half, after Duke had overcome an 11-point deficit to take a one-point lead, Ponds drove to the basket for a layup to give St. John’s a 74-73 advantage. One the Red Storm’s next possession, he drained a long three-pointer from the right wing late in the shot clock for a 77-73 lead with 38 seconds remaining.

“This is big to get a win on the board, we can start fresh,” Ponds said after the game. “We had a tough three-game stretch and it was great to get our confidence at an all-time high.

“We did not want to let the game slip away from us,” Ponds continued. “We had a lead and they cut into us and we stayed composed.”

Composure was missing from Duke all throughout the game, even though they shot 55 percent in the first half (12-for-22) and went into intermission with a 39-32 lead. The Blue Devils committed 12 turnovers in the first 20 minutes, leading to 12 points off of turnovers for the Red Storm. Duke gave the ball away 18 times overall.

The Blue Devils also missed nine free throws, including back-to-back foul shots from freshman guard Trevon Duval immediately preceding Ponds’ three-pointer with under a minute left.

“We did not play basketball the first 32 minutes worthy of our program and we had blank faces, we didn’t talk, we were like five individuals out there and it was disgusting, really,” said Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski in the postgame press conference. “No matter what we said, nothing worked with our team until the last eight minutes, then we had a chance to win. You can say, ‘Why?’ I don’t know why. I do not know why.

“I can tell you that’s not the group I’ve coached all year, and they were a very frustrating group to coach today, because they didn’t respond to anything until the last eight minutes and that’s unacceptable.”

Among its other issues on the afternoon, Duke was hampered by the foul trouble of freshman sensation Marvin Bagley III, who had scored 18 points before picking up his fourth foul trying to go for an offensive rebounds with 12 minutes remaining the game. Bagley finished with 19 points while another freshman, guard Gary Trent Jr., led Duke in scoring with 22.

The Red Storm got back into the game in the second half using the three-pointer, hitting 5-for-9 from behind the arc in the final 20 minutes. Ponds hit three of those long-range efforts, and he ended up scoring or assisting on 10 of the 16 field goals the Red Storm made in the second half.

All this coming from a team that has lost all 11 of its conference games in the Big East so far, and had not won a game since five days before Christmas. Eight of those 11 losses on the spin coming into today came by seven points or fewer, with a number of those games decided in the final two or three possessions. The long-awaited win was indeed coming, given how close they had come to breaking their duck in the win column in 2018, though few could have foreseen it arriving against a legitimate national championship contender.

“To turn it around against one of the most storied teams in college basketball, it’s great,” said St. John’s head coach Chris Mullin. “Probably more importantly for our players to get that taste back in their mouth. I’m proud that they not only said the right thing, but I think they actually felt it. I think it was really apparent. I’m happy for the guys. They needed it more than anything.”

The players needed the win, no matter how or where it came. Also, they needed to put one of the worst months in program history in the past to move forward.

“We would have taken a win if it was in an empty gym,” Mullin said. “Thank God January is over.”

*Editor’s note: Above the byline and story is the photo gallery from Saturday afternoon’s game, with all photos taken by our senior photographer, Robert Cole. After clicking on the first photo to enlarge the picture, make sure to press the left and right arrow buttons to scroll through the rest of the pictures. There are eight pictures in total.

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