St. John’s guards Malik Stith and Dwight Hard craned their necks to clearly see the Garden scoreboard.
The numbers were clear: West Virginia 79, St. John’s 60.
How could that be the final score, considering the Red Storm led 38-22 in the second half?
“I can’t pinpoint it,” forward Justin Burrell said. “I have no idea what it is.”
“We sat in the locker room for 10 minutes after this game and tried to talk about what is it,” Burrell added. “What is it that we can’t do? We play a good 28 minutes of basketball and then somehow, some way, we just don’t play well.”
More troubling than the fifth straight loss for the free-falling Red Storm, or their 12-10 record this season for coach Norm Roberts, or the fact that the opposing team’s high scorer went for 33 points for a second straight game, is this: No one knows how to pull the chute. Like we said, free-falling.
“When they lost their first four [league games] I think I was kind of surprised, but when I saw them bounce back and get the next two I kinda knew, ‘Here they come,’ ” said West Virginia forward Da’Sean Butler. “Because they’re that good of a team. They have a lot of talent. They work hard. They’re scrappy. They got a good coach.”
It might be up to athletic director Chris Monasch to determine how to fix this team. Some fans started chanted “Norm must go,” late in the second half.
This was a highly anticipated season. Upperclassmen such as Burrell, Anthony Mason Jr., D.J. Kennedy, Paris Horne, Sean Evans and Malik Boothe were supposed to lead St. John’s back to national relevance. Instead they find their team fighting to stay out of last place in the league with a 2-8 Big East record. The most recent loss followed form.
Playing its highest level of basketball all season, St. John’s used a 20-2 run to take a 33-22 halftime lead against the No. 6 Mountaineers (19-3, 8-2). The advantage bulged to 38-22. But then Mason dislocated the middle finger on his right hand and West Virginia coach Bob Huggins switched his team from man defense to a 1-3-1 half-court trap.
Huggins uses the 6-foot-9 Devin Ebanks of Long Island City out front. St. John’s had the 5-foot-9 Boothe at the point. West Virginia went on a 16-0 run to take the lead. Butler, who was 7-for-7 from 3-point range, scored 24 of his season-high 33 points in the second half.
St. John’s surrendered 57 points in the second half, the most in at least the last season and a half.
“Just fight and keep playing,” Roberts said when asked if his team could bounce back. “There’s nothing else you can do.”