It’s becoming the same old story for the St. John’s basketball team and it’s getting old quickly.
For the fifth time this season the Johnnies squandered a second half lead and lost a game they should have won, yet this one was much more impactful than the other four as the Red Storm dropped a game at home to Providence, 77-71.
As stands in the NET rankings, it’s a Quad 3 loss, and the third time this year St. John’s (9-5, 2-1 Big East) has lost a game while leading by double digits.
The Red Storm were in front by nine, 64-55, with 6:32 remaining as Providence (8-6, 1-2 Big East) ripped off an 8-0 run to get within a point yet Zuby Ejiofor and Oziyah Sellers pushed the Red Storm lead to five, 68-63, with 3:19 left.
Sellers’ midrange jumper would be the last field goal made by the Johnnies as the Friars closed the game on a 14-3 run. The biggest play came by Stefan Vaaks, who brought Providence within a point on a 4-point opportunity after being fouled by Dylan Darling as a made a 3-pointer.
Vaaks scored all of his 15 points in the second half and connected on 4-of-5 attempts from distance as his final triple gave Providence the lead for good, 72-70, with 1:57 left after Ian Jackson swung things back in favor of the Johnnies with a pair of free throws.
“On a night when we had our worst offensive performance of the season, we had to be almost perfect defensively and down the stretch we anything but perfect, and it was our veterans who made one mistake after another,” Rick Pitino said after the loss.
The dagger came as Vaaks was working on former Friar Bryce Hopkins, who shook him and found Oswin Erhunmwunse for a dunk that pushed the Providence lead to four, 75-71, with 32.4 second left.
The loss negated an outstanding individual performance from Zuby Ejiofor, who was the only player on St. John’s to make a positive impact. Ejiofor tied a career-high 33 points and set a career-high 15 rebounds.
Ejiofor was 8-of-16 from the field and the rest of the team was a combined 12-of-55 (21.8-percent) shooting.
“We just lost our confidence when we kept missing,” Pitino added. “Then, they just wanted to feed Zuby the ball almost every time down the court because they lost their confidence.”
“It was just a one man show tonight.”
Ian Jackson, Oziyah Sellers, and Joson Sanon were 5-of-30 from and 1-of-15 from 3-point range.
St. John’s started as well as they could have imagined, jumping out to a 13-0 lead and making Providence look like they didn’t belong on the same court.
However, the Friars would respond with a 26-11 run before the Johnnies entered the locker room on a 12-3 run and a seven-point advantage.
The Red Storm will begin a critical two-game road trip on Tuesday night (7:00 p.m., Peacock) against Butler before its bout in Omaha with Creighton on Saturday afternoon.