St. John’s basketball ready for quick turnaround following thrilling win

A short memory will be needed for the St. John’s basketball team following its thrilling victory over St. Peter’s.

Typically a big win catapults a team into its next game, but for the St. John’s basketball program, the Johnnies have a lot to work on following its 76-75 win over St. Peter’s.

The Red Storm are right back in action on Thursday afternoon in a battle against La Salle, in the final game of the Joe Lapchick Tournament for St. John’s, and the team’s energy level in the opening minutes will be critical for the success of Mike Anderson‘s team.

“We will find out,” Anderson said of how Wednesday’s victory would impact Thursday’s game, “it is a quick turnaround and we had some guys expend a lot of energy.”

Those guys that expended a lot of energy were the stars of opening night Posh Alexander and Vince Cole and more could be asked from the first year players in their second Division I games.

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St. John’s will not have Julian Champagnie (ankle) available again and the status of Rasheem Dunn hangs in the balance following a hard fall on his chin in the second half, which required stitches.

However, more will be expected from the returning players in Anderson’s system, who did not play up to their coaches standards in the win, “It is just one game, we will see what happens the next game, but we are going to need all of these guys…We are going to need guys like Rasheem [Dunn], we are going to need Greg [Williams Jr.], we are going to need Marcellus [Earlington] we’ve got to get Josh [Roberts] going,” Anderson said.

St. John’s basketball knows the challenge that lies ahead.

Given the effort the program exerted against St. Peter’s, the Johnnies know that they will have to find a new sense of energy against a team that has not played a game yet this season.

“Tomorrow we play a team that has some tape and hasn’t played a game, so they are going to come out with the same kind of energy,” the second year head coach of the Red Storm said.

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La Salle returns its leading scorer from a season ago, David Beatty, now a senior and former South Carolina transfer, who averaged 10.7 points per game for the Explorers in 2019-20.

Tipoff is at 2:00pm EST from Carnesecca Arena and the game can be seen on FS1.