MILWAUKEE — For all the freshman mistakes and youthful inconsistency, St. John’s has played hard this season, rarely had its effort called into question. But last night it wasn’t so much questioned as flat-out criticized, the Red Storm folding in the second half of an 83-64 beating at the hands of No. 24 Marquette.
The bowed heads and slumped shoulders and palpable frustration told the tale. The Red Storm (8-8, 2-3 Big East) have lost all six of their games against ranked teams, and with a chance at a breakthrough, what it got was a breakdown. It let Marquette shoot 67.7 percent to turn a second-half lead into a blowout loss.
“In the second half, they were grittier and came after us, and we didn’t do well with that,’’ said acting St. John’s coach Mike Dunlap. “There was a lot . . . that ws positive, but I didn’t like how we played in terms of effort. We can do better. And when we lost D’Angelo [Harrison], that hurt in terms of being able to make a surge and take on the momentum.
“A young team sometimes doesn’t understand what kind of bite a team is going to come back at you with . . . We just took a backwards step to the adversity. It’s a combination of things. What they did and just the fact once we started turning the ball over, we got discouraged and were never to reclaim the rope and grab back onto it.’’
Despite having leading scorers Mo Harkless and Harrison sit the last nine and final four minutes of the first half, respectively, the Red Storm led 32-31 at intermission. But Marquette (13-4, 2-2) made 14 of its first 17 shots after the break, and opened up the second half with a 38-15 run that blew the game open.
God’sgift Achiuwa had a team-high 20 for St. John’s, 13 in the first half mostly on pick-and-rolls. But Davante Gardner (game-high 23 points) face-guarded him in the second and smothered him, and Marquette’s Darius Johnson-Odom (18 of his 20 points after the half) took over during the blowout.
“In the second half we didn’t play hard, so we have to change that,’’ said Achiuwa. “It was really discouraging. We turned the ball over so many times, and that really hurt us.’’
Harrison picked up two quick fouls in 7 seconds, with St. John’s trailing 40-36. He fouled out with 10 points .