Champagnie’s career night on Looie’s birthday has Johnnies flying high again

Julian Champagnie lit up DePaul for 34 points and 16 rebounds as St. John’s held off Blue Demons Wednesday. (Photo by Vincent Dusovic/St. John’s University Athletics)

NEW YORK — I don’t give a damn for the same old played-out scenes

I don’t give a damn for just the in-betweens

Honey, I want the heart, I want the soul

I want control right now

— Bruce Springsteen, “Badlands”

Seventeen days.

That was the elapsed time between what turned out to be St. John’s last action of 2021, a largely forgettable loss to former Big East Conference rival Pittsburgh in a flurry of missed execution, and its delayed — yet much-anticipated — league opener Wednesday against DePaul, initially slated to be the fifth Big East contest on the slate before COVID-19 claimed the Red Storm in its latest list of casualties across the nation.

Julian Champagnie, the Johnnies’ all-world forward, was first to fall prey to the virus, testing positive in the days leading up to the Pitt game that he ultimately missed. Several other players soon followed, but it only took mere minutes Wednesday to see that Champagnie was on a mission to make up for lost time.

On an evening where St. John’s celebrated the 97th birthday of program patriarch Lou Carnesecca, the junior forward offered a present to the legend in the form of 34 points and 16 rebounds in a magnum opus that contributed largely to the Red Storm defeating the Blue Demons, 89-84, instantly moving to the top of the Big East standings in the process.

“When I came out of quarantine, I jumped right into workouts,” Champagnie said of his lack of noticeable rust despite a near-month-long absence as St. John’s (9-3, 1-0 Big East) overcame a scrappy DePaul team in a much-needed pick-me-up in all ways. “My first day out, I was in the gym for four hours. I think getting in the gym, getting my rhythm back, getting my shot back, kind of helped me push forward.”

“It’s kind of like he refused to let us go down,” Mike Anderson added as Champagnie set the tone for a lineup the head coach shook up by starting Dylan Addae-Wusu at the point guard spot and bringing Posh Alexander off the bench in what essentially amounted to a coach’s decision. “Nothing surprises me with this kid.”

And St. John’s was more than willing to turn to Champagnie to provide a jolt on the offensive end. Whether it was his playmaking in the first half, highlight-reel dunk in the early stages of the second stanza, or his straightaway 3-pointer going into the final media timeout, he provided answers for a Red Storm team rife with questions that now trigger less of a burning feeling in the stomachs of fan who spent the holidays agonizing, talking about a dream, trying desperately to make it real.

“He’s one of the hardest-working kids,” Anderson gushed of his surefire Haggerty Award favorite and potential Big East Player of the Year. “And I’ve had some good kids that work hard. Joe Johnson, who played for us at Arkansas, you look at Bobby Portis, he’s in that mold of putting time into his game and it’s good to see it pay off for him. Each year, we keep talking about it, and he keeps making that next step. It just says a lot about him and what kind of player he is.”

Champagnie drives the bus, but when his dominance is underscored as it was Wednesday by Addae-Wusu (17 points, including a dagger three in the closing seconds) and Alexander (16 points in yet another outing that defined his mettle), it only makes St. John’s much harder to solve, more formidable in the grand scheme of things as Anderson’s cautionary preseason optimism becomes closer to a finished product.

“We rose to the occasion,” he assessed. “A lot’s been thrown at us. You look at last year, we didn’t have any COVID situations. This year’s a little different. They came out and played as a team, and they found a way to win.”

“We haven’t played terrible. That’s kind of a misnomer that everybody thinks we were. We’re still becoming a team, and we’ve been on pause for a while. Now you’re in a new year, and hopefully it’s a new mindset. We just played our first game, so from that standpoint, we’re still behind in terms of playing games. You’ve gotta take care of home, and that’s what we did tonight.”