St. John’s basketball closes regular season with loss to Marquette

St. John’s basketball narrowly falls in regular-season finale against Marquette. 

On Sunday afternoon in Milwaukee, the St. John’s basketball Team wrapped up its regular season against Marquette with a narrow 79-75 loss to the Golden Eagles.

The game was back-and-forth from start to finish much like the matchup St. John’s and Marquette had back on January 30 inside Carnesecca Arena. However, the result was the same, a 70-65 loss for the Red Storm.

St. John’s jumped out to an early 6-2 lead and led the Golden Eagles 24-18 after the first quarter.

Marquette would jump on top in the second, outscoring the Johnnies 24-18 to take a 42-40 lead into the halftime break.

The second half saw just two total points separate the teams with the third quarter being much more of a defensive battle with 19 combined points compared to 53 combined in the final 10 minutes of the contest.

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The Johnnies would tie the game several times with less than three minutes to go but after they tied the score at 69 by a Kadaja Bailey jumper, Marquette went on a 10-6 run over the last 1:51 to close out St. John’s.

Leilani Correa and Bailey each finished with 22 points in the loss with Bailey reaching the 1,000 point threshold in her collegiate career. Rayven Peeples nearly had a double-double with a 9-point, 11-rebound performance before fouling out.

St. John’s shot 48-percent from the field and 53-percent from 3-point range, but committed 16 turnovers that turned into 15 points for Marquette.

The Golden Eagles shot 55-percent from the field to clinch the win and a first-round bye in the Big East Tournament with the No. 5 seed this weekend.

St. John’s basketball looking for better luck in postseason

St. John’s finishes the regular season as the No. 7 seed in the conference; right where the Red Storm were predicted to finish in the preseason poll.

The Johnnies now travel to Mohegan Sun Area in Connecticut for the Big East Tournament as St. John’s is set to take on Xavier in their first-round matchup on Friday at 1:30 p.m. EST.

The Red Storm swept the regular-season series over the Musketeers handily by a combined 54-point margin and has not lost to Xavier since 2015.

The winner will go on to face the No. 2 seeded Villanova Wildcats on Saturday night in the Big East Quarterfinals.