The selection committee was right. St. John’s didn’t belong in the NCAA Tournament.
The Red Storm proved they weren’t worthy of a bid with an ugly season-ending home loss to heavy underdog Robert Morris — arguably their worst performance of the season — in the opening round of the NIT Tuesday night.
At least last year’s team won a game in the NIT. The top-seeded Johnnies — playing without freshman point guard Rysheed Jordan (tonsillitis) for the third time this season — no-showed the first 31 minutes of the postseason tournament, falling behind the No. 8 Colonials early and were unable to fully recover in an 89-78 loss in front of 1,027 at Carnesecca Arena that ended the Red Storm’s disappointing season.
“They definitely beat us to the punch in every phase of the game, they played extremely well and we played poorly, and as a result they hammered us good,” St. John’s coach Steve Lavin said. “We played terrible. Your guess [as to why] is as good as mine.”
The year began with big talk of an NCAA Tournament berth and ended with a whimper against a low-major program with just eight healthy players.
Lavin said on a conference call Sunday night his team was excited about the opportunity to continue its season, despite falling short of its NCAA Tournament goal. They seemed content to end the season in dismal fashion against the NEC regular-season champion.
Point guard Jamal Branch admitted the team was “upset” to miss out on the Big Dance.
It showed.
St. John’s (20-13) made Robert Morris (22-13) guards Karvel Anderson and Lucky Jones look like the best backcourt in the country, the duo carving up the Johnnies to the tune of 63 points — a career-high 38 from Anderson — 15 3-pointers and hitting 18-of-33 shots overall. St. John’s did make a furious rally that fell short — a season-long trend — going on a 24-6 burst to get within 74-66 with 2:45 left, before Anderson iced it with his ninth 3-pointer.
“It’s very disappointing,” Branch said. “We had a chance to play all our games in the NIT [at home]. I just felt like we didn’t give it our all until the last seven minutes of the game.
“We were all frustrated about the run they made, and we just started going on our own island, doing things we shouldn’t have done. We should’ve kept it simple and stuck with each other.”
Starting in place of Jordan, Branch scored a career-high 22 points, Max Hooper added 18 off the bench and JaKarr Sampson had 11.
The first half was a practice in futility. Robert Morris, the 15¹/₂ -point underdog, raced out to a 16-2 lead 3:47 in and led by as many as 25 points. The Colonials shredded the Johnnies from the perimeter, making 58 percent of their shots and 9-of-15 from beyond the arc.
“We were just a step slow, a day late, dollar short — whatever that phrase is — and we were going in the wrong direction for the majority of the night,” Lavin said.
The fourth-year coach already began talking about next year in his postgame press conference, alluding to having the most returning players in the Big East — provided all the underclassmen return — and noting a similar performance next season won’t be good enough.
“Next year, obviously, the goals, the aspirations, will be ratcheted up because of what we return,” Lavin said.