St. John’s dominated by Seton Hall

(Photo by Double G Media)

The Seton Hall Pirates drained 52 percent of their tries from the floor and eight of their 21 shots from three to show St. John’s they’re still the BIG EAST Champions with a 86-73 victory at the Prudential Center, Sunday, January 22.

Marcus LoVett led Johnnies with 22 points, making this his seventh game this season with 20 or more points. He also gave a team-high four assists. Bashir Ahmed put up 19 points and a team-high seven rebounds, while Shamorie Ponds added nine.

St. John’s cut a 27-point deficit down to just 12 in the last few minutes of the contest. Seton Hall collected 45 rebounds compared to the Red Storm’s 33. Angel Delgado of the Pirates had the conference’s first 20-20 game since 2010. He scored 21 points and pulled down 20 boards. Jamine Peterson of Providence was the last BIG EAST player to do so, with 29 points and 20 rebounds against Rutgers on Jan. 9, 2010.

The Red Storm started the game by bouncing ahead, 10-9, with a LoVett layup five minutes into the contest. From there, the Johnnies missed nine straight field goals as the Pirates advanced to 24-15 seven minutes later.

After St. John’s cut Seton Hall’s lead to seven, 24-17, a little less than two minutes later, the Pirates closed the first half of the game on a 22-9 run, taking a 20-point lead, 46-26, into half time.

With three minutes into the second half, the Red Storm slowly began to cut Seton Hall’s lead, after trailing by as many as 27, 55-28.  St. John’s were able to make it a 19-point game with 15:16 left in the game. Then six and a half minutes later, Ahmed cut the deficit to 15, 67-52, on a pair of free throws.

St. John’s were able to reduce the Seton Hall advantage to as little as 12 but were unable to defeat the Pirates, who had a 86-73 victory.

The Red Storm will play its second-straight road game on Wednesday night, traveling to Providence for a 6:30 p.m. matchup with the Friars on FS1 and 570 AM WMCA.