SJU exacts revenge for loss last season
They all said it would be different. Every St. John’s player that had to sit through last season’s humbling loss against Niagara vowed it wouldn’t happen again this year. They were right.
Niagara had handed the Red Storm a 23-point beating in last season’s ECAC Holiday Festival in the Garden. But last night the whipping stick was in the other hand, and St. John’s showed no remorse in its 115-70 pounding of the Purple Eagles that amounted to payback and then some.
Yesterday, the Storm were ranked eighth by The Post, ninth in the ESPN/USA Today poll and tenth by the AP. Last night they showed the pollsters that they were deserving – and showed Niagara that they had long memories.
They made a school-record 10 three-pointers to ring up the third-most points in school history. They jumped ahead 18-6 less than five minutes into the game and rolled past Niagara in front of 6,008 fans, including former coach Lou Carnesecca, who saw a vintage St. John’s performance he could be proud of.
“For me to say [last year] was never mentioned, I’d be lying. But I didn’t need to [mention it],” said St. John’s coach Mike Jarvis. “They remembered and they were determined to make sure that what happened a year ago would never happen again.”
‘We tried to come out and redeem ourselves from last year,” said Ron Artest, who had 19 points, nine rebounds and seven assists. “And then the game just got out of hand.”
Artest was one of six St. John’s players in double figures, helping the Storm win their ninth straight game and improve to 12-2, their best start since 1990-91. It was their 16th straight win at Alumni Hall, and it was Bootsy Thornton’s shooting and St. John’s team defense that made it possible.
Thornton scored a game-high 22 points on 9-of-11 shooting, and a perfect 4-for-4 from 3-point land. And the shooting guard put some ferocious defense on Niagara’s Alvin Young, who was seventh in the nation in scoring at 23.3 ppg. Young did manage 18 points, but the Bishop Loughlin product shot just 6-for-17 and scored 14 of those points after halftime. By then St. John’s led 61-32 and the game was all but over.
“I’ve got to be confident. I can’t go into the game saying this guy is gonna do this, this guy is gonna do that,” Thornton said. “I’ve got to be ready to play anybody.”
The game vs. Niagara (6-6) was sandwiched between Big East foes Rutgers and Miami, smack between one team that led the Red Storm by 14 on Sunday and another that got its first Big East win (Jan. 1992) and first league road win (Jan. ’95) against St. John’s.
But the Red Storm, despite their first Top 10 rating since December 1991, weren’t about to look past Niagara. After shooting just 30 percent in last year’s 86-63 loss, St. John’s held the Purple Eagles to 32.4 percent shooting last night.
They softened Niagara up with deadeye shooting. They smothered them with withering defense. And in the end, they demoralized them with an array of spectacular plays.
‘I don’t know why they had to take it out on me. I wasn’t here when Niagara beat St. John’s,” quipped first-year Purple Eagles’ coach John Mihalich. “I’ll tell you what, that’s a really good team. When they shoot the ball like that, they can beat anybody in the country.”
St. John’s ten 3-pointers broke the school mark of nine set Dec. 17, 1997 vs. Manhattan. Thornton hit three and added a layup for 11 points in the first 4:06, and Artest’s 3-pointer 49 seconds later made the score 18-6 and the Red Storm never looked back.
They kept pouring it on, and the lead grew to 27 at 44-17 on an Artest 3-pointer with 7:52 left in the half. It was 61-32 at intermission, but by then Thornton was 5-for-5 with 13 points, Young was 2-for-10, and the game was over. Fittingly enough, it was a Thornton 3-pointer that pushed St. John’s over the 100-point mark with 6:29 left and all but cleared both benches.