There was a different feeling on the trip down I-95 to Philadelphia. There were more smiles, more laughs, more of an upbeat attitude.
One victory can have that effect.
“When you win, everything’s better,” St. John’s coach Chris Mullin said in a phone interview on Tuesday, as his team prepared to face No. 1 Villanova at Wells Fargo Center Wednesday night. “You sleep better. Food tastes better. Everything is better in life.”
Especially when you beat the fourth-ranked team in the country and snap an 11-game losing streak in the process. One win, a stunning upset of Duke at the Garden Saturday afternoon, changed the morose feeling around the Red Storm for the time being. Instead of focusing on what has gone wrong in a winless league season so far and why they have lost eight games by seven points or fewer, all the talk was about the historic victory and the brilliance of sophomore guard Shamorie Ponds, the Big East and Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association Player of the Week.
Mullin’s insistence that his program was close to breaking through seemed prophetic.
“To me, it was very, very similar to the other eight games. We made a few shots that quite frankly we’ve been missing,” he said. “Some of those free throws we’ve been missing, we made. We caught a break here and there, made a few shots, and came out on top.”
This raises the natural question: Was this a one-game anomaly or can St. John’s (11-3, 0-11) use this performance to finish strong? It won’t be easy initially, facing Villanova (22-1, 9-1) Wednesday night, though the Red Storm pushed the Wildcats in the first meeting, back on Jan. 13 at the Garden, losing 78-71. But the rest of the schedule is mostly manageable: three home games, against Seton Hall, Marquette and Butler, and a visit to ninth-place DePaul. A fast finish can at least slightly change the narrative about this lost season.
“I think it’s very important,” Mullin said. “I think maybe a game like Saturday with help with confidence, use that as momentum to carry us through February. We all know we had a tough stretch in January. But for the most part, they’ve done a great job erasing what happened and moving on.”
In this case, though, St. John’s doesn’t want to erase what happened in its last game or move on. The Johnnies want to remember it, and hope more performances like it follow. Hopefully, it won’t become a distant memory.