Latest Groundhog Day moment for Johnnies an indictment on Anderson

As Mike Anderson insists potential is still there for St. John’s, Red Storm’s underachieving ways largely fall on his shoulders. (Photo by Bob Dea/Daly Dose Of Hoops)

NEW YORK — It’s all the same, only the names will change

Every day, it seems we’re wasting away

— Bon Jovi, “Wanted Dead Or Alive”

St. John’s fans have gone into their third decade of hoping against hope, forces of nature and acts of God for their beloved Red Storm to return to the promised land of college basketball. 

From Jarvis to Roberts, Lavin to Mullin, glimmers of bright futures have appeared on the corner of Union and Utopia, only to be washed away in a deluge of here-we-go-again moments where the program, for some strange reason, can seemingly never get out of its own way. And after two uptick years under the current caretaker, year three has become more of the same as incoming talent and star incumbents have never found the same synergy for 40 minutes at a time.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

So it was again Wednesday for the Johnnies, who spent between 25 and 30 minutes controlling Creighton and flustering the Bluejays all over Carnesecca Arena before and after point guard Ryan Nembhard went down with a season-ending broken wrist midway through the second half. But a confluence of missed shots and questionable substitutions left St. John’s with yet another plate of cookie crumbs when searching for a filet mignon, seeing another resume opportunity fly by the wayside in a deflating 81-78 loss.

“We didn’t deliver on our part, and I think a big part of it was just executing going down the stretch,” Mike Anderson said as he mumbled through an explanation for the latest in a litany of woulda-coulda-shoulda finishes for the star-crossed Red Storm. “We didn’t do a good job. We’ve seen this over the course of the year, where we don’t make proper plays going down the stretch. If you look at the last five possessions, we didn’t execute the things we wanted to do. We just came up a little short.”

Coming up short has been, in essence, a microcosm of the season in Queens, especially on an evening where Julian Champagnie and Aaron Wheeler shot a combined 4-for-26, forcing Posh Alexander to carry a heavier offensive load among St. John’s triumvirate of leaders. Only this time, compared to other past games, the supporting cast stepped up despite being handcuffed by its coach’s rotations.

O’Mar Stanley authored the best game of his young career with 14 points on 7-of-8 shooting, but did not play the final 8:45 of regulation. Stef Smith added 13 points off the bench, too, but was used sparingly even as a Ryan Hawkins-led Creighton team found the weak spots in the Johnnies’ sets and exploited them at will. Esahia Nyiwe (seven points, five rebounds) chipped in admirably as well, yet in crunch time, neither of the three were to be found.

“I don’t think we went away from them,” a defiant and evasive Anderson said as he defended his play call on the third-to-last offensive possession, where he looked to draw a foul or get an open shot down one with 17 seconds remaining in regulation, yet watched as Montez Mathis’ driving layup was snuffed out. “They got back in there and they tried to make a difference. We had other guys out there that were playing. I guess Tez is not a scorer, huh?”

“I thought tonight, we showed the potential, because other guys came in and played well. Stef played well. O’Mar came in and gave us good minutes. Esahia got in and gave us some quality minutes, so we got scoring from other guys, and that’s what I talked about. So from that standpoint, we had other guys that I thought stepped up, and are capable of doing it. But you’ve got to be able to make plays. That’s the bottom line.”

St. John’s has made plays, albeit not consistently. And with essentially six months — counting the offseason — to develop a roster with nine new players, it should not fall on Champagnie and Alexander to constantly pull a team with the documented upside the Red Storm has out of the fire. Instead, Wednesday’s failure to execute is an indictment on Anderson either not trusting his roster enough or being too stubborn to adapt a system that, at times, comes off as antiquated in contrast to more athletic opposition, to his players’ strengths.

“We just had some misfortunes that we didn’t execute on the other end,” he reflected. “Your players gotta step up and make plays. We didn’t. Defensively, I thought we were good at times, but at the same time, you’ve got to score, you’ve got to get to the free throw line. That’s something we’re trying to do going down the stretch.”

“I thought our bigs played really well, but then you look at your scoring forwards — your leading scorer and your third-leading scorer — they go 4-for-26. That’s hard to overcome.”

With the right adjustments, it is not. A look within the Big East over the past week alone saw Ed Cooley put his Providence players in position to come back from a 19-point hole to defeat Butler, and just Wednesday night, erase a late-game deficit to upend Xavier in triple overtime. St. John’s has the horses to win heavyweight fights, that is not up for debate. The circumstances that counteract talent, though, may be.

“I don’t think it’s one particular thing,” Stef Smith said as he searched for an answer for the latest maladies within the St. John’s program. “I think the positive to this is we know we can play with these teams if the game is this close, so going down the stretch moving forward, we’re just going to have to figure out a way to win. That’s what it comes down to.”

And with three regular season games remaining in an underwhelming campaign where any shot of an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament has vanished, winning is what the Red Storm needs to do. It just becomes harder for a program and fan base preconditioned to disappointment. But after all, everyone associated with the Johnnies would drive all night just to get back home to the place in the sun that St. John’s still holds.