In the moment, in the aftermath, they didn’t really want to hear the encouraging words, didn’t want to hear the grateful cheers of their half of the 16,357 people inside Madison Square Garden. Didn’t want bouquets.
Didn’t want any lovely parting gifts.
“We’re not into moral victories,” said D’Angelo Harrison, the St. John’s guard.
“I take every loss the same,” said JaKarr Sampson, the Johnnies’ forward. “It hurts.”
“Yes, it just hurts to lose,” Harrison said. “Especially to Syracuse.”
So as much as the Johnnies may have filled the city-side portion of the Garden with hope Sunday, turning a 12-point halftime deficit into a two-point lead late before falling to second-ranked Syracuse 68-63, that was only a portion of the good they took away from this first-semester exam.
The fact that they leave wanting more?
Expecting more?
That will serve them better than any of the consolation prizes they were offered as they walked off the floor. St. John’s isn’t yet ready to beat Syracuse, and it was no accident when the Orange were pushed to their limits they were able to respond, much to the delight of the countryside portion of MSG.
“Right now, we’re rated high because we started high and everyone else lost,” said Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim, but even he would concede no team rises to No. 2 in the country based solely on a winning lottery ticket.
Syracuse is terrific, and getting better, and when the game was there to be won they had a player, C.J. Fair, good enough and confident enough to take — and make — the game’s crucible shots.
St. John’s? Put it this way: you don’t turn 12 down to two up, with the ball, against No. 2 unless you have something to offer, too, and make no mistake, the Johnnies do. They have toughness, they have resilience, they spend most of their offensive possessions composing beautiful music with selfless play.
“We are New York City’s team,” their coach, Steve Lavin, said, and although he was talking in the context of Syracuse’s boast the Orange are New York’s team, he could have been speaking about something else, something deeper, because the way the Johnnies play they really do embody the very best of what New York City thinks about itself as a basketball town.
Most of them do not come from here, their games hardened not by the PSAL or the CHSAA but by the gymnasiums and playgrouds of Akron, Ohio, and Missouri City, Texas, and Chicago and Detroit and Philadelphia. But together they do tap into the city’s basketball heart. They will be a fun team to follow. There are plenty of wins on the Johnnies’ schedule, enough we should be talking about them well into March.
The fact they weren’t good enough to beat Syracuse on Sunday? No demerits for that. There are a lot of teams that can say that about themselves.
“I’m not encouraged,” Lavin said. “We came in expecting to win the game.”
And you know something? Good for him, wanting more. Good for Sampson, expecting more, and for Harrison, demanding more. Good for all of them they were far more perturbed by a lifeless first half and an empty final 4.5 minutes than they were proud of the 15.5 minutes that allowed them to inject a little old-school Big East ruckus into this intersectional non-league game.
That’s how good teams become special ones, by not settling, by not accepting kudos when they fall on the wrong side of the hyphen. They gave the Garden a thrill by surging to a 60-58 lead with 5:48 to go, by still being within three, 64-61, with 2:01 to go? Good for the fans, especially if it means they’ll keep coming back to the Garden and Carnesecca Arena the rest of the way.
The Johnnies are going back to work.
“We have the lead and we have the ball,” Lavin said. “We have to find it in ourselves to win that game.”
They didn’t Sunday. They will, and plenty, the rest of the way. Good for them for wanting more.