Moments after Saturday’s dismal loss to Georgetown, JaKarr Sampson gave a brief analysis of what went wrong.
Five days later, D’Angelo Harrison echoed Sampson.
“That’s not St. John’s basketball,” Sampson said Saturday.
“That’s not the way St. John’s plays,” Harrison repeated Thursday.
But 14 games into the season, the sentiment also begs the question: Who is St. John’s?
The answer has yet to be revealed.
There have been glimpses of promise, a four-game stretch that showed this team’s potential: impressive wins over Fordham, San Francisco and Youngstown State and a narrow loss to second-ranked Syracuse. But also a handful of uneven performances that left a lot to be desired, most recently losing the first two Big East games of the season at Xavier and Georgetown.
“I feel like we haven’t been playing to the caliber we should be at,” junior guard Phil Greene IV said in advance of Saturday’s meeting with Villanova at the Garden.
Steve Lavin has asked for patience, more time to find a starting five he fully believes in — he’s used eight different lineups — and settle on a smaller rotation he trusts. February — the fourth-year coach has repeated over and over again — is when he expects this team to jell.
Lavin surprisingly started walk-on Khadim Ndiaye and seldom-used wing Felix Balamou in the loss to Georgetown, leaving Sampson to come off the bench for the first time and Greene for the second time, a move that raised eyebrows.
Thursday, in further explaining the decision, Lavin said: “Something that I have learned from all my mentors is it’s a privilege, not a right, to play college basketball. You have to earn it every day through your approach. The kids know, as always, that you earn it with what you do on a daily basis in practice.”
When asked if that was to suggest his usual starters were leaving something to be desired, Lavin declined to delve into the potentially touchy subject.
Nevertheless, Lavin said he was pleased with this week of practice, in particular the performance of Sampson, whom Harrison described as a “monster.”
St. John’s (9-5, 0-2) has played its best basketball after long breaks like this, which was the case before the Fordham and Syracuse games.
Naturally, the Red Storm hope history repeats itself. They are anxious to end their Big East skid at two. St. John’s fancied itself an NCAA Tournament team capable of winning the Big East, not a group just trying to avoid the league’s cellar.
“We’re in last place in the league,” said junior forward Sir’Dominic Pointer, the team’s heartbeat and its glue. “There’s a sense of urgency. We have to get a win.
“We definitely know we can’t stay at the bottom. We got to make our way to the top.”
Unfortunately for the Johnnies, their next game could be their toughest test yet. Eighth-ranked Villanova, an overwhelming favorite to win the Big East, invades the Garden on Saturday afternoon with its wide array of potent 3-point shooters, scoring depth and experience. The Wildcats boast an impressive 14-1 record that includes wins over ranked opponents Kansas and Iowa.
“It’s a challenge for us,” Greene said.
St. John’s still feels confident. Harrison went as far as to say if they are victorious, the Johnnies wouldn’t look as it as an upset.
But the team the Red Storm thinks it can become, the one many expected to see by now, has yet to show up enough to their liking.
“We recruited a lot of good players,” said Pointer, forgetting perhaps for a second he’s one of those players. “I want to see those players we recruited ready to play.”