St. John's 14-point lead disappears as Reynolds wraps up comeback win for Seton Hall

Shavar Reynolds, a former walk-on, hit biggest shot of his life, a three at buzzer to lift Seton Hall to victory as St. John's saw 14-point lead evaporate in Big East opener for both teams. (Photo by Bob Dea/Daly Dose Of Hoops)

NEWARK, NJ -- Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug

Sometimes it all comes together, baby, sometimes you're a fool in love

Sometimes you're the Louisville Slugger, baby, sometimes you're the ball

Sometimes it all comes together, baby, sometimes you're gonna lose it all

- Dire Straits, "The Bug"

And so it is for St. John's as this Saturday night becomes a Sunday morning, the culmination of 2018 beginning with a collapse against Seton Hall after appearing to have the Pirates dead to rights throughout the evening before a controversy-marred final seconds may have cemented Michael Stephens -- a generally highly-regarded official who has received national championship game assignments in three of the past four seasons -- as perhaps the biggest heel in the eyes of the rabid Red Storm fan base following his inadvertent whistle with three seconds remaining in regulation, something later verified and confirmed to be a timing error by a Big East Conference official after the Pirates sent the Red Storm to its first loss of the year, a 76-74 defeat at the hands of sophomore guard Shavar Reynolds, a former walk-on whose three-pointer at the buzzer -- before a second replay review revealed he was fouled, thus adding four-tenths of a second back onto the clock -- served as the final coup de grace for a St. John's team who entered the Prudential Center with Top 25 aspirations in arguably its strongest test of the season.

"The official decided it was a timing error," Big East senior associate commissioner for men's basketball Stu Jackson said in a release delivered by men's basketball media contact John Paquette. "The clock did not start on the initial touch by the St. John's defender on the throw-in."

Draw your own conclusions from the following video (courtesy of Josh Adams, College Hoops Digest) as LJ Figueroa defended the inbounds against Seton Hall point guard Quincy McKnight. It appears that Figueroa deflected the ball into the backcourt for a steal rather than out of bounds, but in light of the timing error, that ended up being a moot point:

For those interested, here's a baseline perspective of the controversial call at the end of the St. John's- Seton Hall game. Draw your own conclusions..#SJUBB #HALLin pic.twitter.com/Ktx30hc6Z1

— College Hoops Digest (@NCAAhoopsdigest) December 30, 2018

Now that we have that out of the way, let's talk about how the game unfolded, with St. John's (12-1, 0-1 Big East) punching Seton Hall squarely on its collective jaw with an 11-2 run to start the game, ironically the same margin by which the Pirates (10-3, 1-0 Big East) established seven days ago in an upset win at Maryland to start that game. The Red Storm went up by as many as 14 points, and seemed to answer every Seton Hall rally to keep the game at a comfortable two-to-three-possession margin until the final minutes, when a 10-0 Pirate run punctuated by Sandro Mamukelashvili's game-tying three from the left arc turned a 69-59 St. John's advantage into a 69-all deadlock with 3:30 remaining in regulation.

What went wrong for the visitors, you ask? The crisp ball movement, which has been the driving force in several of St. John's victories this season, went away. The Red Storm had ten assists on its first 14 field goal attempts Saturday night. It finished with just three on its last eleven, something Chris Mullin would later lament.

"It was our ball movement, or lack thereof," he bluntly stated when asked whether or not fatigue may have played a factor in Seton Hall closing the game on a 17-5 spurt. "I thought in the first half, the ball was moving pretty well. I think we had 10, 11 assists at halftime, and we finished with 13, so the ball got stuck. We'll look at it on tape, but watching it from where I was, there were some guys open and we just didn't move the ball like we did in the first half."

To St. John's credit, the Red Storm did recoup a minute later, when Marvin Clark drained a triple out of a media timeout, its last field goal of the game. Seton Hall, however, as was the case throughout the night, would not go away quietly into the New Jersey night, stringing together consecutive stops and consecutive buckets -- the latter coming on a Quincy McKnight jumper and Myles Powell driving layup -- to take a 73-72 lead with a minute to go that was the first cushion the host Pirates enjoyed. The pendulum swung once again when Mustapha Heron connected on both free throws after fouling Myles Cale out with 44 seconds remaining, putting St. John's ahead by a slim 74-73 tally.

At that juncture, the Red Storm had made each of its nine foul shots in the second half, shaking off the pressure at the charity stripe as deftly as it did the numerous questions about its non-conference schedule for the past eight weeks. Then, two missed front ends of one-and-one scenarios -- the first by Heron, the second by Shamorie Ponds -- proved to be just as critical as the alleged timing error that St. John's fans feel they were hosed by, even if the proverbial law of averages may even things out after Ponds' apparent foul against VCU's Marcus Evans last month at Barclays Center was overlooked.

"If you get one, let me know," Mullin quipped after Jerry Carino of the Asbury Park Press asked if the coach received an explanation for the officiating gaffe. "Even though you don't get fined in college, I'm going to opt to -- I can't believe you don't get fined, so I should say something -- but even though it won't cost me, I'm just going to keep my thoughts to myself on that."

Of the missed foul shots, Mullin did offer an opinion, but would not consider the deflation the end-all, be-all.

"That's part of the game," he conceded. "Free throws, turnovers, moving the ball -- there's a lot of things that happen during the game -- but the fundamentals, they usually come back to the things that help you win or get you beat."

With the page now turned following what was described as "a heck of a shot" by Reynolds, who ended 2018 with the hardwood equivalent of Kirk Gibson's walkoff home run in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, St. John's now shifts its attention to Tuesday night, when the Red Storm open 2019 by welcoming 18th-ranked Marquette to Carnesecca Arena with a chance to not only right the ship, but make another positive statement as conference play has dawned.

"We're trying to play good basketball and improving basketball, which I think we're doing," Mullin said. "We played a good first half and I kept looking up -- we were still at nine, but we never created any separation -- and then we kind of just let them hang around. They made some big shots, I thought they really just started driving the ball down our gut. That kind of wore on us a little bit. It may be the players, but that's not really had a bearing on making statements or preseason, it's really about the game at hand. That's what I've done my whole career, and that's what I've tried to teach my players. The other stuff doesn't really matter."