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| Dillon Mitchell slams one home to put St. John's up 14-11 early on. Photo by Jason Schott. |
In the Big East Tournament Semifinals on Friday night at Madison Square Garden, the St. John’s Red Storm beat the Seton Hall Pirates, 78-68.
The Red Storm, who have already won their second straight Big East Regular Season Championship, will attempt to make it back-to-back conference tournament triumphs on Saturday night against Connecticut, who beat Georgetown, 67-51, in the other semifinal.
It is the first time St. John's has made the Big East Championship game in back-to-back years for the third time in its history, along with 1985 and '86, and 1999 and 2000.
St. John's is the No. 1 seed in the tournament, marking the fourth straight time the top seed has reached the championship game.
This was the fifth straight double-digit win for the Red Storm under Head Coach Rick Pitino.
Zuby Ejiofor led the way for the Red Storm with 20 points on 8-14 shooting, with five rebounds, two assists, and a steal. He is the first player to score at least 20 points in four straight Big East games since Connecticut's Kemba Walker in 2011, when they won five straight games in five days to win the tournament.
Joson Sanon, St. John’s secret weapon, had 15 points on 3-5 from the field, with all three from behind the arc, plus six made free throws, with three rebounds and two steals.
Dillon Mitchell and Bryce Hopkins had 13 points apiece, with Mitchell adding six rebounds and five assists, and Hopkins chipping in seven rebounds and four assists. It was Mitchell's tenth double-digit scoring performance of the season.
Just as they did on Thursday afternoon in their win over Providence, the Red Storm came out hot, taking an 8-0 lead and holding Seton Hall scoreless for the first three minutes and 16 seconds.
Once The Hall got going, St. John’s lead was just 12-11 at the 13:22 mark of the first half.
A Mitchell second-half dunk followed, and that started a 10-3 run for the Red Storm that put them up 22-14 at 10:05. That lead would balloon to 13, at 36-23, on a second-chance layup for ‘itchell with 2:26 left, and they took a 38-30 edge into halftime.
In the second half, St. John’s opened it much the way they did the first, on an 11-0 run to go up, 49-30, on an Oziyah Sellers layup at the 15:39 mark.
Seton Hall would be held off the board for the first 5:25 of the second half, and their offense was still very slow to get going, as they found themselves down 19 points again, at 55-36, with 9:56 remaining.
The Hall then went on a 9-2 spurt to pull within 12, at 57-45, with 7:04 left, and eventually they really started to scare St. John’s when they pulled within six, at 62-56, with 4:41 left.
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| Zuby Ejiofor blocking this Jacob Dar layup attempt at the 3:47 mark of the second half. Photo by Jason Schott. |
St. John’s responded with a 7-0 run to go back up 13, at 69-56, with just 2:27 remaining.
Hopkins made four free throws in the final minute, including two that put them up 64-63 with 41 seconds left to seal it.
This was the 2,000th win for St. John's, and they are now the eighth Division I program to reach the plateau, along with Kentucky, Kansas, North Carolina, Duke, UCLA, Temple, and Syracuse.
Pitino is now the fifth coach in Big East Tournament history to reach 20 career wins in the event, along with Syracuse's Jim Boeheim (50), UConn's Jim Calhoun (35), Georgetown's John Thompson (33), and Villanova's Jay Wright (27). Pitino has done it with Louisville and St. John's.
PITINO POSTGAME: St. John's Head Coach Rick Pitino addressed the media after the game, and he opened with this statement: "Well, we bent a little bit down the stretch after playing great basketball, but we never broke. Seton Hall breaks everybody. They come back against everybody because of their intensity. So, I'm really proud of our guys. They made their free throws. They made good defensive plays down the stretch. Certainly when you can break pressure and make your free throws, you're always going to have a great chance of maintaining your lead.
"So, did a lot of good things tonight. Offensively I thought we were excellent the entire night. This young man here (Joson Sanon) is like a third guard because he does so many good things that don't show up in the stat sheet, and Joson has - like he said, what do you think of your jump shot? He said it's cold-blooded." (To which Sanon replied, "I meant to say cold butter cheese.")
On beating a very accomplished defensive team in this one after beating an offensive juggernaut in Providence on Thursday: "Well, walking over here I was asked how impressive it is to go to a second Final game. I said, 'Well, what's really impressive to me is to beat Seton Hall three times. That is not easy to do because of the way they get after you."
On the chance to make history, as St. John's has never won back-to-back Big East Tournaments: "These guys, what they don't understand because they're young, they're very proud of their accomplishments, but what they don't realize is that St. John's in the '60s, '70s, and '80s dominated the East Coast. It was a dominant basketball team. From Lapchick to Carnesecca, they dominated. And then they went into hibernation like a bear for awhile, and then these guys got 'em out of hibernation."
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