5 BOROUGH SPORTS

The roar of the Garden crowd during the second half of today’s game was heard across the country. Even with St. John’s trailing most of the way, there was something different, even more so than the other four victories over top ten opponents.

Of all the games so far this year, this crowd was all about New York, all about wearing red, and all about St. John’s hoops. It might be hard to believe this, but I made up my mind with about seven minutes left in the game, that St. John’s hoops was indeed back. No time in this surge has St. John’s looked like the team that lost December games to St. Bonaventure and Fordham. In fact, they have looked like one of the absolutely best teams in the country.

Its hard to believe where the Johnnies have come from to achieve what they have today. Steve Lavin has taken a team from the depths of defeat to the worst team on their schedule all year (Fordham) and had them beat five top ten teams. I don’t care if you’re Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, UNC, or any of the classic powers of college hoops, its not often that a team wins so many games against top flight teams.

Madison Square Garden is officially one of the hardest places to play in College Basketball again. With today’s victory, the Johnnies are now 7-1 at the Garden, only dropping a game to Syracuse, a matchup nightmare for any team with out the ability to hit outside shots. Now five victories over some of the nation’s best, along with finally proving they can win on the road and St. John’s is back.

Three weeks from now the selection committee will announce their picks for the tournament, and its become all the more obvious that St. John’s will be one of them. Today we no longer ask if or if not they will dance, but how good can they be?

This entry was posted on February 19, 2011 at 4:22 pm and is filed under College Basketball, St. John's. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.