DENVER — Sometimes, the yellow brick road collides with a brick wall. Sometimes, the magic is siphoned out of the magic carpet, replaced by the harshest kinds of reality. So much had gone right for the St. John’s Red Storm this year, so many brilliant days and nights when they allowed the city to care about college basketball again. They were a great story.
And they were a very good basketball team on most nights.
But they ran into a beast last night.
PHOTOS: GONZAGA BEATS ST. JOHN’S, 86-71
They ran into the Gonzaga Bulldogs, a team making its 13th straight trip to the NCAA tournament, a team that was bigger, faster, deeper and simply more skilled than the Johnnies were, and are.
It was easy to forget that what St. John’s did across so much of this season was exceed expectations, overachieving and taking advantage of teams that had grown careless taking them for granted.
“But that,” coach Steve Lavin said when Gonzaga 86, St. John’s 71 was complete, “is as good a team as we’ve seen on film all year. And they were awfully good tonight.”
They were out of the Johnnies’ league, is what they were, and so there will be no reason for hand-wringing as the curtain falls on this season, no reason for the players to kick themselves or the coaches to second-guess themselves. This wasn’t Louisville losing an inexplicable game to Morehead State, the kind of loss that will inspire calamity in the Commonwealth.
Yes, if you want, you can bemoan the fact that St. John’s reward for 21 victories and a No. 6 seed was Gonzaga, the kind of mid-major that makes you understand why the sport’s big boys fear mid-majors so much.
You can talk about the altitude, which clearly had an effect, and maybe you can wonder if Lavin wouldn’t have been wise to emulate Louie Carnesecca, who brought his 1985 team to Denver early to get their legs used to the challenge.
And, sure, you can blame the fates that sent D.J. Kennedy sprawling on the Madison Square Garden floor last week, that wrecked his knee and took a hammer to the carefully calibrated chemistry the Johnnies had crafted for so much of their success this year.
But even that would be foolish. Because unless Walter Berry, Bill Wennington and Wayne McCoy could have uncovered a few extra hours of eligibility to lend a hand in guarding the Zags’ Redwoods, it wasn’t going to matter.
Not every defeat is a heartbreak.
“Every time I went to make my initial move, they were just swarming me,” said Dwight Hardy, the Johnnies’ best player and their engine, who scored 26 points yet didn’t scratch for the game’s first 12 1/2 minutes, by which point the Zags had seized permanent control of the game. “Once I beat one defender, two more would step up.”
It was that kind of night for St. John’s, which raced to a 10-5 lead, looked to have brought its swagger in full supply to Pepsi Center . . and then found itself buried under a relentless assault of pinpoint shooting, selfless passing and frenetic banging on the interior.
Over the next 71/2 minutes, the Zags put together a 23-8 run that delivered them a 10-point lead; remarkably, over the game’s final 30 minutes, the Johnnies got no closer than eight.
Over those 30 minutes, the Johnnies spent exactly 27 seconds within 10 points of the Zags. The dominance was that complete.
The beating was that sound.
“They just gave it to us,” Hardy said. “They gave it to us good.”
This doesn’t delete what came beforehand, doesn’t change the fact that this core of seniors, this revelation of a basketball team, teamed with the Knicks to give New York City its basketball voice back, brought electricity back to the Garden, reminded us just how deep a part of the town’s fabric college basketball can be.
“In a month, two months, a year, five years from now, they’re going to look back and realize that they brought St. John’s basketball back,” Lavin said, his voice landscaped from a hard night trying to will his team higher than it could finally climb. “They set the bar high for anyone that follows.”
Lavin paused for a tick, and his voice softened.
“They gave our coaching staff the ride of a lifetime,” he said.
Their city, too.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com