Dwight Hardy arrived at St. John’s with the same reputation as so many other prep players coming out of the city: He could score. He had a wicked in-and-out move to the basket and knew how to use his body to draw contact.
And he could shoot.
New St. John’s coach Steve Lavin watched two workouts and concluded that Hardy was as good a pure shooter as he ever has coached.
So naturally the thing to do was to move Hardy from his natural shooting guard spot to the point.
It seemed a curious move at the time, but one can make a strong case that Hardy’s emergence as the team’s starting point guard has played the greatest role in St. John’s going into tonight’s game at Louisville with an 11-5 record overall and a surprising 4-2 mark in Big East play.
Not only has Hardy’s scoring risen from 10.5 to a team-best 15.5 points per game, but his dead-eye free-throw shooting has been contagious. The Red Storm shot 65 percent from the foul line last season. It’s up to 80 percent behind Hardy’s 94-percent shooting from the stripe.
Hardy still has to prove he has emerged as an elite college point guard. His midterm test comes tonight at the KFC Yum! Center, against Louisville (14-3, 3-1), one of the better pressure teams in the nation.
The Cardinals erased an 18-point deficit in the final six minutes against Marquette on Saturday to claim a 71-70 win. Louisville is first in the Big East in steals (10.0 per game) and first in turnovers forced (300).
“Teams haven’t run the press on us yet this season so it will be a big test for me,” Hardy said. “But I think I can handle it well; just take my time and just find the open player when they set up in their press. I’ll be fine.”
Lavin said all the right things to try to deflect some of the pressure away from his 6-foot-1 point guard from The Bronx. Certainly breaking the press is a team responsibility, but there usually are two or three possessions when a point guard has to break pressure himself.
“What they’re hoping for is that one or two runs where they can throw the haymaker on the opponent,” Lavin said.
The Red Storm are second in the league in turnover ratio (+4.56) and the secondary ball handlers such as D.J. Kennedy, Justin Brownlee and Paris Horne will have to help.
“Coming into this year I saw myself as a two-guard. but now I’m adjusting to the point guard spot and now I look at myself as a one guard,” Hardy said.
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St. John’s is 0-5 at Louisville.
Malik Boothe, whom Lavin said graciously has accepted a role off the bench so that Hardy can start, played 24 minutes in Sunday’s 72-54 win over Notre Dame, the most he has played since Dec. 21 because of a hamstring injury.
Lavin said Boothe seemed fine after the game.