Tomorrow, St. John’s continues its tour of beatings in the nation’s capital, where #11/#10 Georgetown Hoyas welcome the Red Storm to the Verizon Center. St. John’s is 10-16 on the season, 4-10 Big East; Georgetown is 22-4, 12-3 in the Big East.
What is there to say? Georgetown eviscerated the Red Storm last time out. Then the Keys to the Game were:
1. Stop turning the ball over,
2. Play like there’s nothing to lose, wherein I name checked the Bunny Ranch (SFW) and talked about how this team wouldn’t score if Mason’s shot wasn’t falling. He went 3-12 and the team scored 42 points.
3. Play good interior defense.
Those keys all stand for this game.
St. John’s players could dedicate themselves to this current roster, this system, and this coach with a gritty, tough performance; the players have learned and battled and practiced toughness with the "war" drill in response to the woodshed ass-whupping they received last time. And last year’s team played a tough half of basketball against the Hoyas. Unfortunately, it was the first half. Basically, the team has to not pee their leg like they did at home against this same team. Usually a month makes a difference in the development of players, especially freshmen, but in this case I am less sure:
Then: St. John’s shot 1-14 from the three.
Now: They couldn’t be that bad again. And if they make a shot in the first 4 minutes, I could see the confidence growing. They executed well for the first 5 minutes of the Duke game, why not against Georgetown? Oh yeah, that Hibbert guy.
Then: Larry Wright played 5 minutes.
Now: Injury or not, if Wright can get out there, let the guy loose.
Then: Coker was working his way into the doghouse, and got awful positioning on everyone he was up against.
Now: I almost think he’s learning. This is a great opportunity to prove his skill, bodying up Hibbert. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him either start or get some significant minutes.
Then: Horne was a defensive guard off the bench; Kennedy got the majority of minutes at the 2-guard.
Now: Horne’s 9-point performance gained him 22 minutes. Granted, this was against a small team, and Coach Roberts likes to change his matchups depending on the other team’s action (in part because St. John’s doesn’t have matchups for the other team to really worry about).
Well, when times get tough and the games are lame, there’s always an unnecessary Emmanuelle Chriqui photo to liven up the day.
Early Previews:
pg Mark Jackson, sg Max Zaslofsky, sf Chris Mullin, sf Ron Artest, c Jayson Williams (no Bill Wennington? Psshhht!) with a bench of Walter Berry, Felipe Lopez, Kevin Loughery, Billy Paultz, and Malik Sealy.
Georgetown:
pg Allen Iverson, sg Sleepy Floyd, sf Reggie Williams, c Patrick Ewing, c Dikembe Mutumbo, with a bench of Jeff Green, Othella Harrington, Alonzo Mourning, Jerome Williams, David Wingate, and Joey Brown (ohhhkay on that one).