St. John's Starts NCAA Tournament With A Surge

 

Dylan Darling got this layup early on Friday night. @StJohnsBball.

The St. John's Red Storm opened the NCAA Tournmament with a dominant 79-53 win over Northern Iowa in their East Regional matchup in San Diego on Friday night.

St. John's, the No. 5 seed, did to 12th-seed NIU what they did to their three opponents on their way to winning the Big East Tournament: knock them out early.

The Red Storm opened this one on a 13-0 clip, and kept Northern Iowa off the board for the first four minutes and three seconds.

Incredibly, they didn't allow NIU to score again until the 13:55 mark when a Tristan Smith free throw cut it to 16-3.

A pair of Lefteris "Who Loves Ya Baby?" Lefteris free throws made it 20-3 St. John's at the 12:46 mark of the first half.

Northern Iowa finally got into some sort of rhythm, as they cut it to 32-18 at the 6:51 mark before St. John's reeled off an 8-2 run to take a 40-20 lead on a Bryce Hopkins layup at 3:29.

St. John's would take a 47-28 lead into halftime, powered by 11 points apiece from Bryce Hopkins and Oziyah Sellers in the first half.

The Red Storm shot 55 percent, or 16-29, shooting, including 7-15 from behind the arc, while holding Northern Iowa to 38%, or 11-29, from the field, and 2-6 on three-point attempts, in the opening 20 minutes.

Northern Iowa started to get into a rhythm at the start of the second half, and they pulled to within 13, at 51-38, with 14:30 remaining.

They would not get closer than that, as NIU committed a costly turnover, and St. John's responded with an 11-4 run to go back up 20, at 62-42, on a pair of Ruben Prey free throws at 10:03.

St. John's would open up a 25-point lead, at 75-50, on an Ian Jackson pull-up jumper with 1:39 left.

Zuby Ejiofor led St. John's with 14 points, on 4-10 shooting, including 1-3 on three-pointers, and 11 rebounds for a double-double, with four assists, two assists, and a steal.

Sellers finished with 11 points, all in the first half, while the bench delivered, as Jackson had nine points (3-5 FG, 1-2 threes), two rebounds, and two assists; Ruben Prey had eight points (2-3 FG) and four rebounds, Joson Sanon had six points (2-4 FG, 2-4 threes), two rebounds, and two assists, while Lefteris Liotopoulos had five points, as he made a three-pointer and a couple of free throws in the first half, and an assist.

PITINO POSTGAME: St. John's Head Coach Rick Pitino addressed the media after the game, and he opened with this statement: "Well, our guys did a tremendous job. The coaches were, including myself, we watched 12 films of these guys, and the players watched about five and we knew what we had to do to win this game. The obvious thing is we had to get our tempo...We had to win the three-point line. So, we had to stop it, choke it down and make our threes and tonight obviously it was 30 to nine (attempts) from the three-point line, which was big. Rebounding wise, it was 45-29. Bryce Hopkins, to my right, is playing great basketball right now. He just does all the little things that are making us win. Played a lot of minutes and Zuby got a lot of rest. So, he's ready for the winner of this game." (referring to Kansas-Cal Baptist)

On the team's three-point shooting and its importance moving forward: "Well, remember, (Northern Iowa) is a team that holds their opponents to like 28 percent from the three-point line. When I left he locker room, I said, 'we know the keys to this game. We know the backboard; we know the turnovers, but the key to the game is stopping the three and making our threes.' It's all we talked about all week because these guys, they looked up at the board and they see six guys that shoot it better than 35 percent. We've got to beat them at that line. We'll beat them in the other areas, but we've got to beat them at that line, and the guys did. They played a fantastic first half. Second half they held serve. They didn't play great, but they held serve and did a good job. But the first half was a brilliant performance on offense, brilliant performance on defense."

On preparation and intensity contributing to the team's fast starts: "I don't think I've ever witnessed more film on an opponent myself than this team. We were really concerned about this game because of their pace. I played them twice with a championship team, and it was tough to beat them and then in the Bahamas, we beat them by five. If you allow them to control their tempo, they can beat anybody. We didn't allow them to control tempo. We got out there off our defense and that was the key to the game. They're much better than this final score. So, we were overly concerned. Now, you only have one day to prepare." (for their next opponent).