Promising season for St. John’s reaches disappointing conclusion with NCAA loss

As Shamorie Ponds’ St. John’s career may be over after Wednesday’s NCAA Tournament loss, Chris Mullin and Red Storm are left to pick up pieces after a season of potential crash-landed with setbacks in six of final eight games. (Photo by Bob Dea/Daly Dose Of Hoops)

DAYTON, Ohio — I try not to think about what might have been

‘Cause that was then, and we have taken different roads

We can’t go back again, there’s no use giving in

And there’s no way to know what might have been

- Little Texas, “What Might Have Been”

St. John’s season had finally reached the destination many felt it was bound for before the season even began, as a roster that ranked among the best in the Big East Conference purely on talent alone could not possibly end its campaign with anything less than an appearance in the NCAA Tournament.

As it was, the Red Storm struggled to even make that stage, sputtering toward a finish line it appeared to have broken the proverbial tape on after a dramatic comeback against eventual league champion Villanova on February 17. But with losses in five of its last seven games, the most recent of which was a 32-point drubbing at the hands of Marquette in a Big East Tournament quarterfinal game where St. John’s looked as though it had no business even seeing the floor, the powers that be ultimately decided the Johnnies were good enough to dance, albeit as the last team into the field of 68.

With that said, there was one last reprieve, one last opportunity to make believers out of cynics, to right the wrong, to salvage a season that suddenly went off the rails. But in the biggest game of its year, St. John’s delivered arguably its flattest performance, shooting 31 percent from the floor in a 74-65 loss to Arizona State in an NCAA Tournament First Four game whose final score was by no means indicative of how the game ultimately played out.

“We just didn’t hit shots,” Shamorie Ponds — who did have 25 points in what may turn out to be his final appearance in a Red Storm uniform — said, trying to explain a nightmarish effort from a team still searching for its first non-vacated postseason victory since 2000. “We didn’t shoot it well.”

“Across the board, we had turnovers, uncharacteristic turnovers,” head coach Chris Mullin lamented. “It was layups, free throws, it was everything. It was probably one of our worst games of the season overall.”

St. John’s (21-13) lived on the perimeter for the majority of the night Wednesday, driving and kicking out to get open looks in an effort to neutralize Arizona State and its interior defense. After a tightly-contested opening segment, a 16-2 run by the Sun Devils essentially put the game on ice — despite the Red Storm drawing within single digits in the second half, but to no avail — and moved Bobby Hurley’s team into a first-round matchup with Buffalo on Friday.

“We couldn’t get over the hump,” Justin Simon reiterated as St. John’s players not named Ponds or LJ Figueroa (19 points, 10 rebounds) shot just 6-for-33 against Arizona State. “Something would happen — a turnover or a missed box-out, or a foul, something like that. We couldn’t really hit shots throughout the whole game to get our rhythm.”

And so it ends for St. John’s, whose disjointed conclusion to the season may perhaps be a harbinger of what lies ahead for the star-crossed program. There are increasing questions about Mullin’s ability to deliver as the head coach — and rightfully so — as he wraps up the fourth of a six-year contract, and must now replace not only Marvin Clark, but perhaps Ponds as well after his “no comment” to a question from the New York Post’s Zach Braziller with regard to returning to the corner of Union and Utopia for his senior campaign was delivered more ominously than any missed attempt by he or his teammates on the hardwood. Regardless, Mullin did his best to put a positive spin on an unsatisfying coda to a four-month stretch that the most rabid of Red Storm supporters hoped would be the elusive rainbow not seen since the final days of the Clinton administration.

“I felt kind of helpless in a way,” he said of a contest his team “just had to play through.” “I’ve sat in the locker room plenty of times, at every level of basketball. This one stings and it hurts, but these guys — as days go by — they’ll appreciate what they did here, and they should be proud of themselves.”

“I just wish we could have played better tonight. I wanted them to move on. I do think — if we would’ve played a good game — we could give people trouble. We showed that, but it just wasn’t meant to be tonight.”