JaKarr Sampson hasn’t forgotten what this season could have been.
As he walked off the floor with his characteristically wide smile — after St. John’s unusually stress-free win over Marquette, 74-59, on Saturday afternoon at Madison Square Garden — the sophomore knew what everyone was thinking.
He was thinking it, too.
“That’s what 40 minutes of St. John’s basketball is supposed to look like,” said Sampson.
After opening Big East play with five straight losses, the Red Storm (13-9, 3-6) started the second half of league play looking nothing like that underachieving group, putting on one of their most complete performances of the season to take their fourth win in the past five games.
St. John’s coach Steve Lavin, who has said all season the team would look its best in February, seems confident that his prediction is coming to fruition, even if he conceded for the first time that they may not be able to recover from the crater they dug.
“The growth, you can see it. We hope it’s this year, if not, it’s gonna be next year because the nucleus is gonna be back,” said Lavin. “We’re moving in the right direction. We just want to accumulate enough wins here to do something special.
“I still love the upside of this team. I like our personnel. I like our parts. I’ve never come off of that.”
St. John’s got a game-high 27 points from D’Angelo Harrison, who hit two separate strings of three 3-pointers that changed the momentum of each half.
Marquette (12-10, 4-5) opened the game with six unanswered points, signaling what looked like another patented slow start from St. John’s, but Harrison helped prevent the paper cut from exploding into the usual bloody mess by scoring 11 straight points to break an early tie at eight, as part of a 22-5 run.
He then hit another trio of 3-pointers to give St. John’s an 18-point lead with 12:58 left in the game. That lead soon stretched to 26, in a second half that never saw a single-digit deficit.
“D’Angelo was in the groove,” Lavin said. “We’ve seen him get in the zone like that a number of times.”
St. John’s took a 33-20 lead into halftime, buoyed by a career-high seven assists from Rysheed Jordan, as well as a strong defensive effort led by Chris Obekpa, who had seven blocks and helped hold Marquette to 34.8 percent shooting from the field.
Sampson said he still believes “everything is still there for us,” referring to an NCAA Tournament berth, but without an incredible finish to the season, it will require a run in the Big East Tournament to fulfill what seemed so likely months ago.
Now, it no longer matters what the Red Storm were supposed to look like.
It only matters what they will be.
“St. John’s is the most talented roster in the league and I don’t think any coach would disagree with that,” Marquette coach Buzz Williams said. “They’re good enough to win any game that they play for the rest of the year.”