– by Adesina O. Koiki
A Lot of Sports Talk editor-in-chief
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NEW YORK — At the turn of the century, the St. John’s Red Storm were the Kings of New York. Names like Barkley, Bootsy, Artest et al. were the spearheads in a resurgence of an original Big East powerhouse, bringing the city to the edge of its seat and the school to the edge of the Final Four and championship glory.
Since those heights, the Red Storm basketball cratered into the depths of irrelevance, both in the league and nationally. But a old Big East head has come back to the league, and has resuscitated the program and, in turn, the World’s Most Famous Arena.
The Red Storm, coached by Rick Pitino, turned St. John’s into outright Big East regular-season champions for the first time since 1986 in a magical 27-4 campaign, and, after today’s easy victory against No. 8 Butler to begin this year’s Big East Tournament, St. John’s is one-third of the way to claiming their first Big East Tournament title since the 2000 team took home the crown on their way to a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
St. John’s projects to be a No. 2 seed in this year’s Big Dance, led by the man who’s about to take his sixth different team to the NCAA Tournament, an NCAA D1 record. Five of those teams he has led to a conference regular-season title, including this season’s Johnnies, and the one school he was not able to win a conference regular-season title with, Providence, was the school in which he took his first team to the Final Four back in 1987.
In the second game of the day session, No. 5 Marquette overcame a 14-point deficit in a thrilling victory over No. 4 Xavier, 89-87, the biggest come-from-behind victory for the Golden Eagles this season and snapping the Musketeers’ seven-game winning streak.
*Editor’s note: Above the byline is the photo gallery from Thursday’s quarterfinals, with photos taken by ALOST photographers Dale Horton, Scotty Rausenberger and Danny Suriel. After clicking on a photo to enlarge the picture, press the left and right arrow buttons on either side of the caption to scroll through the rest of the pictures that appear on the first page. Also, click on the numbers and/or arrow appearing immediately below the picture grid to load the next set of photos. There are 16 pictures in total.
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