One week ago, St. John’s suffered its most deflating loss of their already-disappointing season when they blew a 10-point second-half lead and crumbled against Providence. With a 9-5 record, their two away games against Butler and Creighton suddenly grew in importance, and the Red Storm needed to show their fans — and most importantly themselves — that they can get off the mat and get back into the fight.
On Tuesday, they played rope-a-dope, withstanding a seven-point deficit before rolling the Bulldogs
in a 14-point win. On Saturday, they won by a technical knockout.
St. John’s cruised to a 90-73 win against Creighton, securing a second consecutive Quad 1 win and marking their first road victory over the Bluejays since 2019.
While Creighton withstood an early 7-0 spurt to take a 23-18 lead, they were quickly snowed in on both sides of the ball from that point. St. John’s outscored the Bluejays, 34-11, for the remainder of the half to take a commanding 52-34 lead into the locker room. The Johnnies’ three-man frontcourt had the size advantage and dominated the board battle by a total of 24-11, and they also shut them out on the offensive glass in the first half.
The Red Storm continued applying pressure in the second half, taking their largest lead of 27 points after Bryce Hopkins made a close jumper to give the Johnnies an 84-57 edge with 5:05 remaining. A late surge of Creighton buckets made the final margin more appealing to the home team.
St. John’s found their offensive success after Zuby Ejiofor continuously punished Creighton’s aggressive help defense, as the star big man kicked the ball out to open shooters whenever multiple defenders converged on him near the basket. Ejiofor’s playmaking resulted in a team-high six assists for himself and contributed to the Johnnies’ second-best three-point shooting performance of the season, with the team combining to fire 12-of-23 from deep (52.2%).
No player benefited more from the defensive attention Ejiofor received than leading scorer Lefteris Liotopoulos, who built on his recent form of hot shooting with a career-high 17 points and five made three-pointers off the bench. Liotopoulos was one of six Red Storm players to score in double figures.
Improving to a Big East conference record of 4-1 for a third consecutive season under Rick Pitino, St. John’s travels back to New York on Tuesday, January 13 to face the sputtering Marquette Golden Eagles (6-11, 1-5 Big East) in more of a “can’t lose” than a “must win” game. Tip-off from Madison Square Garden is scheduled for 6:30 p.m., and the game can be streamed on Peacock.
