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D’Angelo Harrison and his fellow seniors have spent four years at St. John’s without ever playing in a single NCAA Tournament game.
That will change on Friday night when the No. 9 Red Storm meet No. 8 San Diego State in a South Region game in Charlotte. The Johnnies, who will be without suspended big man Chris Obekpa, will play the second game that night on CBS following the Duke game.
“Getting in was big for me,” Harrison said. “I know it was for everyone else. Winning games and having all of these accolades does not mean anything because we haven’t done anything in the NCAA Tournament. The fact that we are in is a big step for me and the program. We just want to win as many games as possible.”
Harrison and fellow seniors Phil Greene IV, Sir’Dominic Pointer and Jamal Branch have never won a Big East Tournament game, and now they are the only Big East players in the tournament without any NCAA Tournament experience.
“It was a great moment, we finally did it,” Pointer said. “It’s been four years in the making and we finally got it. We know who we are playing, where we are playing and that we need to prepare for it. We’ll be ready.”
“For the kids, it’s surreal because it’s the first time so there is a lot of adrenaline,” St. John’s coach Steve Lavin said. “They’ll be able to celebrate this for a few hours before we start our preparation for San Diego State University. They’re allowed to enjoy this moment because they’ve worked so hard to punch through and bring St. John’s back to the NCAA Tournament.”
Lavin expects the game to be played at an up-tempo style, and he won’t have the 6-foot-9 Obekpa, one of the leading shot-blockers in the nation, to protect the rim after he was suspended for a violation of teams rules.
St. John’s, which already was not a deep team, just got much thinner after losing its lone legitimate big man and rim protector.
“San Diego State prefers an up-tempo style of play, similar to ours,” Lavin said. “My quick snapshot, before we start doing our film work, is that it will be an up-tempo affair.”
The winner could get No. 1 seed Duke in the third round. Duke beat St. John’s, 77-68, in January at Madison Square Garden in what turned out to be Coach K’s 1,000th career victory.
“I remember just how badly we wanted to win the game, to win that 1,000th win for Coach K and just for ourselves to be able to get that game out of the way,” Duke star Jahlil Okafor said on ESPN. “There was so much talk about us winning the 1,000th game and we all were really excited about that game.
“They fought us really well and we had a late comeback in that game. It was an exciting game so if we were to be matched up with them again, it will be a lot of fun.”
Knicks President Phil Jackson and Carmelo Anthony also sat courtside for that game to scout the 6-foot-11 Okafor, the projected No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft.
The Red Storm will be making its 28th all-time NCAA Tournament appearance, but first since 2011 when they lost to Gonzaga. Dating back to its first NCAA Tournament appearance in 1951, St. John’s has accumulated a 27-29 overall record in 56 games as well as a 5-6 record in the second round.
This season, the Red Storm has earned five wins against teams in the RPI Top 50 while four of the team’s 11 non-conference regular-season victories were against teams in the RPI Top 100 – Syracuse, Minnesota, Saint Mary’s and Long Beach State.
