Ponds' latest virtuoso performance helps St. John's overcome hot-shooting Cal, improve to 4-0

Shamorie Ponds had reason to be awe-struck after 32-point outing, including game-clinching three in final minutes, to lift St. John's past Cal Monday night. (Photo by Bob Dea/Daly Dose Of Hoops)

NEW YORK -- Hey, don't let it go to waste

I love it, but I hate the taste

Weight keeping me down

Done, done, on to the next one

Done, I'm done and I'm on to the next...

- Foo Fighters, "All My Life"

Trailing by seven points with six-and-a-half minutes to play, against a team picked ahead of only one of its Pac-12 Conference foes, St. John's fans may have inevitably had a reaction similar to that of Dave Grohl, the rock icon whose aforementioned lyrics sixteen years ago provided an appropriate -- undesirable, yet given the never-easy, perpetually-Maalox-inducing tenor of Red Storm basketball, appropriate -- backdrop to the affairs inside Barclays Center Monday evening.

Those in attendance -- and there was a large red-and-white-clad gathering which descended upon the home of the Brooklyn Nets -- appreciated that which they had been treated to: Shamorie Ponds opening the vault for the latest installment of must-see television (and we'll get to that later), a supporting cast which stood tall in offering vital and understated impacts to a team with a cadre of talented depth, and a resilient collective force determined to unite for a shared desire to pull through. But it came at an expense, as it usually does and always will, that of an upset-minded Cal Golden Bears program which torched the nets as if Jason Kidd and Tony Gonzalez -- and maybe even Jaylen Brown, Allen Crabbe and Jabari Bird for the more recent folk -- had walked through the doors at the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush to suit up for the inhabitants of Berkeley.

Cal's 67-60 advantage with 6:39 remaining in regulation yielded the latest here-we-go-again moment in what has been a life cycle of such experiences for St. John's supporters. Yet unlike past years, this group had an answer. It came in the form of an 18-7 run, started and finished by Ponds, who buried two three-pointers -- the first a falling-away look from just off dead center that echoed back to Marcus Paige's heroics at North Carolina, the second a confident, stone-cold dagger from the same vicinity -- during that stretch to swing the pendulum once and for all and present victory to the hometown boys.

St. John's 82, Cal 79, heart attack avoided once more.

"I just found a rhythm, and Coach was just telling me to keep going," Ponds said after the newest chapter of his nightly tour de force tale was written, 32 points on 11-of-15 shooting later, to the tune of the Red Storm moving to 4-0 on the young season and a date with either Temple or VCU Tuesday evening in the championship game of the Legends Classic. "My teammates told me to keep going, so I got hot and I just wanted to stay hot."

"The crowd got us into it late in the game," he added, citing the fan support that has returned after years of apathy permeated the roots of the program, something a little dearer to the Brooklyn native's heart on this particular night. "It just felt good to be home."

The pilot light didn't ignite immediately, though, as Cal (1-2) sought to erase the ignominy of its shocking loss to Yale by making each of its first six shots and nine of its first eleven to start the game, scoring the first six points of the night and landing a straight right to the Red Storm's collective jaw in the form of an 11-4 run over the first four minutes. St. John's battled back, first chipping away at its deficit before seizing control late in the opening stanza with a 12-3 run fueled by the backcourt trio of Ponds, Mustapha Heron and Mikey Dixon, taking a seven-point lead into the intermission and looking for all the world like a runaway winner.

"Defensively, they came out of the gate and they wanted to run," said Ponds. "We just stuck together, and that's how we're gonna get through it. We have to stay together."

"We let them get comfortable, and they made some tough shots," head coach Chris Mullin assessed with regard to the game's opening act. "They were working off the dribble and going deep into the shot clock, so you have to give them credit. As far as our team goes, we got them back on their heels a little bit. I was happy with the way we regrouped and got the win."

"Them shooting at such a high rate and scoring at a high percentage really dictated the tempo of the game. We're the type of team that if we get a few stops in a row, we can get out in the open floor. We weren't able to do that, so we had to play a grind-out game, and we hung in there and just stole it at the end."

Cal had other ideas out of the box in the second half, placing eight of the next ten points into its own ledger to trim the gap to one point and prompt Mullin into a timeout just over two minutes into the final period. The Red Storm responded with six straight points to go back up seven, only for the Golden Bears to uncork a 17-6 spurt that vaulted Cal into a 56-52 advantage that soon reached the 67-60 crest wherein Ponds took matters into his own hands as only he could, putting his team on his back yet again and proving just how different this season may ultimately be.

"I think we're gonna get a lot better," Justin Simon chimed in, supplementing Ponds' appraisal of the Red Storm depth. "I think we're getting better every day, in practice and in games. We're just getting a feel for each other, and we're improving tremendously on both ends."

"We've talked about being in this position before, and we're gonna be in it again," said Mullin. "Shamorie caught fire, of course that sticks out, but even guys who didn't -- I thought Marvin (Clark) came up with some big rebounds, made some free throws -- we talk all the time about how the numbers may change on any given night depending on who's playing well and who's in rhythm, but our daily (approach) has to be the same, especially with the lineup that we have right now. It's gotta be about team defense, team rebounding, and being really unselfish on the offensive end."

Aside from those three characteristics is the experience on the roster, which also served as a deciding factor.

"That experience, I think, showed out," Mullin said. "Our guys had the confidence that they could win it, and they went out and made the plays to do it. We were fortunate enough that Shamorie found his own rhythm, pretty much. He made some tough, tough shots. He made some deep threes -- that runner he made over that big kid (7-foot-3 freshman Connor Vanover) -- those were some tough shots."

Ponds' heroics were not limited to the offensive side of the basketball, either. In fact, it was the ball movement he facilitated -- both Monday and in St. John's preceding contest last Friday at Rutgers -- that had Mullin heaping buckets of praise upon his program cornerstone as the junior superstar burnished his resume even further.

"Shamorie obviously can score the ball, everyone knows that," Mullin expounded. "He's a high-level passer, and I thought tonight he had to score, so he did. He made some high-level passes last game, other guys were going, and he kept us lined up and played as unselfish a game as I've seen him play since he's been with us, and he was very effective. He's the type of player that doesn't have to score to influence the game. When he needs to, everyone knows he can."

"That's his maturity and his experience. That's really what won the game tonight. I think Shamorie's come back with a very open mind, and he wants to win. He wants to make plays that win. If that means scoring the ball, he'll do it. On a given night, if it's just playing pure point guard, he'll do that, and that's really a part of his game that I think has not been seen yet. I think, especially at Rutgers, people were telling me that not only was he making good plays, but the way he stayed in the game when he wasn't scoring was really impressive. There's not many guys who can do both."