On Tuesday night, St. John’s hosted Northwestern in Madison Square Garden and erased the Wildcats from the list of our game’s unbeaten teams with an 85-69 win. The Red Storm trailed 40-37 at halftime.
Then, it happened. A series of commonplaces combined to make something incredible.
St. John’s took a halftime message from head coach Steve Lavin to heart and made finding good shots their top priority for the second half. They ended up attempting 20 shots in the half, which broke down thusly:
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20 field goals attempted
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16 made field goals
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10 layups
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2 dunks
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2 “other” two-point shots
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2 three pointers (on just three attempts)
There were also 14 made free throws, and when you add that up it amounts to a 48-point half. Not bad at all, especially against a team that was undefeated at the time, and completely aware that beating major-conference opponents on the road can only help them gain entrance to the NCAA Tournament, that promised land the Wildcats have never visited.
Look at those numbers again, though: of the Johnnies’ 16 made shots in the second half, 12 of them were layups or dunks. None of them were second chances off of offensive rebounds. St. John’s didn’t have an offensive rebound in the second half — not surprising, considering there were only four chances for a St. John’s player to even get one in that period. This was a concentrated effort by a team to get the ball inside, or at least as inside as possible, before even considering a shot. The amazing thing about SJU’s second half shooting performance was that there was nothing amazing about it. There’s nothing amazing about hitting layups — the wonder comes from getting so many close-up chances in the first place.
It’s true that Northwestern’s defense had been pretty porous so far this season. Of the 345 teams in Division I, the Wildcats were 215th in the nation in FG% defense (44.5%) and 205th in blocks per game with a mere 3.1. Even more telling is how they’ve defended different areas of the floor; they defend the three much better (32.7%, 124th nationally) than they defend inside the arc (50.5%, 256th in the country). On the other side, St. John’s is one of the best teams in the business shooting from two-point range (51.8%, 54th) and much less successful from outside the three-point line (32.3%, 234th). Lavin and his assistants were certainly aware of Northwestern’s two-point defensive shortcomings (if not of those very numbers) and drove home the point to their players that getting the ball inside by any means possible was the key to overcoming Northwestern, and that by playing to their own strength, the Red Storm would be exploiting the Wildcats’ biggest weakness.
In the second half on Tuesday, the Red Storm absorbed that message, and executed. To St. John’s supporters, that might be the only thing more impressive than the 80% from the floor. After a couple of blown 20-point leads that resulted in losses to Fordham and St. Bonaventure, it was St. John’s who finished strong this time. Obviously, not all halves of basketball will go as well as this one did for St. John’s, and it’ll be a few seasons before SJU backers — even though we are talking about New York City sports fans — can realistically expect Steve Lavin to have turned the Red Storm back into a Big East power and a national title contender. His team’s play in the second half against Northwestern on Tuesday, though, showed that his skill in communicating a game plan to his players and getting them to execute it is intact, and that’s a rarer skill than you might think. What’s more, it gave St. John’s backers another helping of what they need right now — a reason to hope, a tantalizing view of what can happen when a good coach has coachable players.