St. John's basketball begins Big East Tournament against Georgetown
After finishing off the regular season on a high note with back-to-back wins and securing the No. 3 seed in the Big East Tournament, the St. John's basketball earned a bye into the quarterfinals and will take on Georgetown in Mohegan Sun Arena tonight at 9:30 p.m. (FoxSports2).
The last time St. John's finished as high as 3rd was back in the 2019-20 season. Despite going 3-4 in February, the Red Storm earned wins against Providence and Marquette to earn a Top-3 spot.
The Red Storm owned tiebreakers over Marquette and Villanova, all which finished 11-7 in conference play.
The team is led by newly crowned unanimous All-Big East First Team selection Unique Drake who had a breakout season scoring 18 points per game, good for 3rd in scoring in the Big East. The redshirt senior has made herself mostly as a spark plug off the bench and occasional starters role for most of her St. John's career, culminating in being named the Big East Sixth Woman of the Year last season, but has been a fantastic top scoring option in 2023-24.
Graduate student Jillian Archer was named as an All-Big East Honorable Mention after averaging 11.2 point per game on 58.6-percent shooting, tied for the top of the conference play for that mark.
St. John's (17-13, 11-7 Big East) will take on No. 6 Georgetown (20-10, 9-9 Big East) who was the last team to hand them a loss back on February 20, 51-43, its lowest point total in the season.
The Red Storm won the earlier meeting in Carnesecca Arena back in January by a narrow margin of 57-56, so despite the seeding this has been a tough matchup for the Johnnies this season.
Georgetown are coming into the game on a four-game winning streak after taking down Xavier, 62-40, in last night's first round game.
Senior guard Kelsey Ransom is the Hoyas leading scorer, but junior forward Brianna Scott was an absolute problem for St. John's in their last meeting scoring 21 points and nine rebounds off the bench en route to the Hoya win. A major key for St. John's is slowing her down.
The concern for St. John's all season has been their 3-point shooting, averaging 30-percent as a team, along with heavily relying on Drake at times offensively. Other scorers will need to step up for the Johnnies to advance.
The winner takes on the winner of No. 2 Creighton and No. 7 Seton Hall on Sunday at 5 PM in the Big East Semifinals.