Seton Hall held the ball, trailing by one point in the final seconds — after overcoming nearly all of a 17-point deficit — with a chance to hand St. John’s its sixth straight loss to start Big East play.
But the play failed. Sir’Dominic Pointer knocked the ball away from Fuquan Edwin. With that, everything changed. Seton Hall’s familiar foe became completely unrecognizable.
In the three weeks since that game, the Red Storm (15-9, 5-6 Big East) have morphed from a last-place squad searching for an identity and a first conference win into the league’s hottest team, one now searching for a fourth straight win — and eighth in the past nine games — as they enter the Prudential Center on Thursday night to face the Pirates (13-11, 4-7).
“I think ultimately it forged a strength and a sense of purpose that has been good for us going forward,” St. John’s coach Steve Lavin said. “Maybe we don’t play the level of basketball that we are now if we don’t have some of those heartbreaking losses.”
Though Seton Hall has lost two straight and is 1-4 at home in the Big East, there is no looking past the Pirates. Looking back won’t allow it.
St. John’s last win at Seton Hall came in their fourth year as the Red Storm, when Metta World Peace was a freshman named Ron Artest, when coach Fran Fraschilla faced off with Tommy Amaker, when current Johnnies freshman Rysheed Jordan was just a 3-year-old.
“We think every game is a championship game,” junior Phil Greene said. “That’s how we have to play. That’s how we’ve been winning. We’re not going to resort back to our old ways.”
St. John’s buried its old ways with renewed focus on defense, having held teams to 65.1 points, while forcing 14.5 turnovers over the past six games after allowing 76.4 points and forcing 12.8 turnovers in the first five Big East games.
What got them going?
“Just the fear of losing,” Greene said. “Everyone’s playing their hearts out, playing together as a team. We have one of the best teams, I think. So, when we play together, and just don’t think, good things happen.”
With the NCAA Tournament selection just over a month away, Lavin said he feels it’s premature to figure out how many wins it will take to make it as an at-large team, but Seton Hall coach Kevin Willard and Marquette coach Buzz Williams said this week they believe it will take 11 conference wins to assure a spot.
For suddenly surging St. John’s, a 5-2 finish — including a win at Villanova — and some help, still is a possibility. A possibility few thought was possible three weeks ago.
“We’re a hungry group,” leading scorer D’Angelo Harrison said. “We want to blitz every team. We just want to win that bad. There’s a great feeling in the locker room.
“We went through a lot, 0-5 to start the Big East, and now we turned it around. We were supposed to be playing like this. I’m not going to say it’s good that it happened, but it made us learn a lot in a few weeks, and now we’re a completely different group.”