St. John’s 72-64 victory over DePaul Sunday afternoon at the Garden was important for the Red Storm’s NCAA Tournament hopes — but it was even more significant for the beaten-down team to have a few moments to celebrate and forget the grief it has dealt with recently.
St. John’s coach Steve Lavin revealed starting point guard Rysheed Jordan — who didn’t play on Sunday after attending the emotional funeral of his aunt Niaja Kane on Friday — wasn’t the only member of the team to deal with loss, saying his players lost five “loved ones” in the span of 48 hours last weekend.
St. John’s sports information director Mark Fratto confirmed junior forward Sir’Dominic Pointer lost two people close to him and senior forward Orlando Sanchez lost his basketball mentor, Hector Baez, who passed away from colon cancer in his native Dominican Republic on Feb. 22. Sanchez and his wife, Flor Esthefani Sanchez, also gave birth to a daughter, Ysabel Angela, Feb. 21, adding a blessing to all the recent tragedy.
On Sunday, Lavin held out Jordan to give the youngster time to properly grieve the loss of his aunt, who he grew up with and was 12 years his elder. He received the news of her death after the Red Storm’s loss at Villanova on Feb. 22. She was shot and killed in her North Philadelphia home during the game, a source said, part of a double homicide according to reports from Philadelphia. After attending her viewing on Monday, Jordan played in Tuesday’s loss to Xavier.
“It was just a very unprecedented, unique, unusual eight-day period,” Lavin said. “That’s really what I talked to the team about after the game, how proud I am of the way they’ve encouraged one another, supported one another, provided that fellowship like a family does during difficult times. Because there really are no words for the degree of tragedies that happened in a 48-hour window.”
The hope is now St. John’s can get back to relative normalcy leading up to next Saturday’s matchup with Marquette, both teams’ Big East regular- season finale and another must-have game for the Johnnies’ NCAA Tournament hopes