The St. John's Red Storm fall to the #1 ranked Syracuse Orange in the Carrier Dome. Syracuse improves to 28-2, 15-2 Big East; St. John's falls to 15-14, 5-12 in the Big East.
St. John's came out with some execution early, but the Johnnies didn't have enough in the tank to make it a game against the aggressive Orange. Like a few other top teams against the Red Storm, Syracuse didn't come out firing with their best early; but after some turnovers and missed shots, the Orange found their stride with flurry of steals, blocked shots, and easy scores during a 9-2 run.
It was an easy celebratory coronation win for the Orange. And just another loss for the Storm.
St. John's actually shot relatively decently from the field, making 7-20 from beyond the arc (but only 18-41 inside, 44%)...
But Syracuse shot 52% form the field, got 27 foul shots, and put up a video-game ridiculous 1.5 points per shot. That's like playing without a defense. No one does that. The funny thing is that this bad a performance will be masked by people's lack of understanding of tempo-free numbers. I will post more in the morning, but a quick calculation shows this wasn't a particularly fast-paced game.
Syracuse scored 46 points in the paint to St. John's 32 (nicely done by the Storm with the baseline alley-oops) and the Orange also had 22 fast break points to 4 for the Red Storm. Best of all (for the Orange), walk-on Brandon Reese not only got a shot off, but made the three... and was fouled by St. John's Malik Boothe.
The Cuse crowd had one more happy moment for their senior night, and everything was the same for the Red Storm. St. John's started Dele Coker and Justin Burrell. Coker had moments but looked rusty, and Burrell had too much to defend down low. Kennedy didn't start the game because he was late to a team meeting (or something along those lines). When he was in, he alternated solid play with passive/ unfocused defense, as did Sean Evans. Paris Horne had a solid day shooting the spot-up jumper from three. Dwight Hardy injured his knee scoring his only basket of the game; he may be ok to play on Friday at DePaul.