TAMPA, Fla. — St. John’s coach Norm Roberts decided a bit of shock treatment was necessary for his team when it gathered for practice the day after a disheartening nine-point home loss to Seton Hall a couple days ago.
Roberts’ approach seemed to have paid off.
D.J. Kennedy scored 12 of his 17 points in the second half, helping St. John’s to a 74-58 victory against South Florida on Saturday.
“Since we had a really hard loss, and I know everybody’s down, why don’t we just forfeit the rest of our games?” Roberts recalled telling his players. “I talked to the league. The league said we could forfeit the rest of our games.”
Kennedy didn’t fall for the ploy. He didn’t need external motivation after blaming himself for the loss with a two-point effort that dropped his scoring average to 14.4.
“He knew that he didn’t play up to his potential and what he can do,” Roberts said, “and he knows that we look for him to do great things for us. He just was very, very focused on us doing a good job today.”
Paris Horne had 11 points and Malik Boothe added 10 for St. John’s (15-11, 5-9 Big East), a winner for the third time in four games after losing five in a row. Justin Burrell contributed seven points and 10 rebounds for the Red Storm.
Dominique Jones and Mike Mercer each scored 17, and Chris Howard finished with 14 points and five assists for South Florida (16-10, 6-8). The Bulls entered the game with four consecutive home victories and five of seven overall.
“The easy baskets we gave up, I thought it set us back mentally during the first part of this game, and we didn’t recover very well,” Bulls coach Stan Heath said.
St. John’s, which hit a dismal 32.8 percent of its shots from the floor against Seton Hall, responded with its best shooting performance of the season with a 58.7 mark Saturday.
“We have to have a good defensive performance to give ourselves a chance to win,” Heath said, “and our defense just wasn’t there today at all.”
Roberts explained the dramatic improvement on offense for his team.
“We took shots that were in rhythm,” he said. “We were confident in how we were shooting the ball. We were confident where we were getting the basketball. And when we play that way, we shoot the ball well. Guys just stepped up and made plays.”
“I thought the great thing about our team is that no one made excuses after the Seton Hall game,” Roberts said. “We didn’t get it done. We just didn’t get it done as a team, and we knew we let go of a great opportunity, and we had to come back stronger today.”
Said Kennedy: “That was a game we really wanted and we needed. We just our worst basketball of the year. We just had to look over that, and Coach did his best just to make sure we stayed together.”
St. John’s scored 10 unanswered points to close a first half that included six lead changes with a 35-24 lead. The streak reached 16 points after the break, the eventual margin of victory, but South Florida immediately answered with a 15-3 run to cut the deficit to four.
The Red Storm, which held second-half leads in six of its conference losses, dominated the rest of the way.
The Bulls hit only 5 of 22 shots from behind the arc and finished 23-for-56 (41.1 percent) overall.
St. John’s has won five straight games since South Florida opened the all-time series with a NIT victory in 1995.