College Basketball

Surging St. John’s nips Hall for key Big East win

Over the last month, St. John’s has played eight games and won seven of them.

Thursday night’s performance at the virtually empty Prudential Center was probably the Red Storm’s worst performance in this run — but it was also their most revealing.

On a night when St. John’s was outrebounded, committed a season-high 19 turnovers and trailed virtually the entire way, but still ended up on the right side of a hard-fought and ugly 68-67 victory over rival Seton Hall.

“I think our kids are being rewarded for having the right approach and attitude for over a month now, from that Georgetown game forward,” St. John’s coach Steve Lavin said after the Red Storm beat Seton Hall on the road for the first time since 1998. “Now some of those games that went the other way are coming our way. Like life itself as a metaphor, things tend to balance themselves out if you’re making the right choices.

“I’m a big believer in things will balance itself out, and this team is a good example of that.”

Up next is a Sunday night showdown at the Garden against similarly hot Georgetown, which handed St. John’s (16-9, 6-6) its worst loss of the year, a 77-60 setback Jan. 4 in the nation’s capital.

But this is a different Red Storm team now, one in the NCAA Tournament mix with four straight Big East victories after starting 0-5 in the league.

“That’s a big game,” junior guard D’Angelo Harrison said. “We’re on one-game winning streaks. That’s how we roll.”

Despite getting outplayed during a first half performance that reminded Lavin of the team’s 0-5 start in the Big East, St. John’s made its own luck after the break, upping the tempo and closing off the paint. After blowing a six-point less with less than eight minutes to go, it held Seton Hall without a point over the final 2:05, and prevailed on Chris Obekpa’s free throw with 2.1 seconds left.

“We watched a lot of film. We studied those [first] five [Big East] games,” Harrison said. “We found ways to lose. We fixed it, we corrected it. Now we’re finding ways to win.”

The final play was setup to have Harrison come off a stack screen, but as Obekpa screened his man, Jordan saw the big man open under the hoop and darted a pass between Seton Hall defenders, threading the needle like a quarterback finding his tight end over the middle between linebackers.

“He’s as exceptional a passer as any player I’ve coached for this stage of a career,” Lavin said. “The judgements, the precision, is first rate.”

Obekpa, gaining confident by the day, said: “It was a smart play.”

Harrison scored a team-high 12 points, JaKarr Sampson shook off a scoreless first half to score nine points, Jordan added 10 and Obekpa had 10 and five rebounds and Jordan had 10. Edwin led Seton Hall (13-12, 4-8) with 25 points and Patrik Auda had 15.

For Obekpa, it was his fourth game in double figures in his last five, a stunning turnaround after going the first 53 games of his career without reaching 10 points once.

“We’ve been working on that the whole time in practice,” Obekpa said of his new-found offensive confidence. “It’s part of basketball. You have to score. The whole team believes in me I’m going to make the shot.”