Seton Hall squanders 15-point lead as Pirates let one get away against St. John’s

Najai Hines (25) chases loose ball as Seton Hall saw 15-point lead slip away in loss to St. John’s Tuesday. (Photo by Wendell Cruz/Imagn Images)

NEW YORK — For 24 minutes, Seton Hall had everything its way.

The edge in toughness. An increased physicality. One of the best players in the Big East ineffective against the Pirates’ in-your-face defense. Timely outside shooting. The notion that everything was once again coming together for a team that had dropped two straight to fall out of the Top 25 almost as fast as it had entered the polls.

It was all there, until it wasn’t.

Leading St. John’s by 15 points with 16 minutes to play, Seton Hall had its Hudson River rival on the ropes searching for its first win at Madison Square Garden in nearly four years. But an anemic 11-for-20 effort at the free throw line and an 11-for-31 mark shooting layups led to the Pirates’ demise, as the host Red Storm came back to score a 65-60 victory Tuesday, its fourth straight over The Hall.

“When teams make a run, the way to stop a run is getting the ball inside and getting to the free throw line,” a dejected Shaheen Holloway lamented. “We did that. We just didn’t cash in.”

Seton Hall (14-5, 4-4 Big East) last won in Manhattan on January 22, 2022, when it rode a career day from Myles Cale to a win over St. John’s in a year that ended in the NCAA Tournament. Holloway, who replaced Kevin Willard at the reins the following season, remained winless at the Garden after coming up short in his fifth attempt. The loss, the Pirates’ third straight, marks the longest losing streak of what has been a resurgent year following last season’s 7-25 campaign.

“This sucks,” Holloway bluntly added. “We’ve just gotta get back to the drawing board. I thought we came in with a good game plan on a short prep for (St. John’s), and I thought for 30-plus minutes, we controlled the game. They just imposed their will.”

“It started on the offensive glass. We weren’t boxing out in the second half, and I think that was the difference.”

The Pirates attacked the backboards in the opening stanza, ripping down 12 offensive rebounds against a St. John’s team that had yielded just 17 total caroms on that end since a January 3 loss at Providence. With Zuby Ejiofor hampered by foul trouble and unable to impact the game the way he normally would, Stephon Payne flirted with a double-double in the first half, ultimately finishing with 13 points and 15 boards. A.J. Staton-McCray led Seton Hall with 16 points while Tajuan Simpkins added 14 of his own, but Budd Clark’s off night made matters far more difficult. The junior missed all seven of his field goal attempts, only finishing with three points, but battled valiantly through injury.

“He got hurt (in Saturday’s loss to Butler),” Holloway revealed. “He hurt his quad last game in the first half. He’s a tough kid, he tried to play through it. I thought he played on pretty much one leg. He was out there, he just didn’t have a Budd Clark game.”

After going to the locker room with a 38-32 halftime lead and a plus-8 margin on the glass, Seton Hall scored the first nine points after the intermission to force a Rick Pitino timeout. The stoppage would soon be the Pirates’ undoing, as St. John’s ramped up the pressure and unleashed X-factor wing Dillon Mitchell as part of a comeback that saw the Johnnies secure 27 second-half rebounds to pull the battle of the boards even at the final buzzer.

While the Red Storm is now 7-1 in Big East play for a second straight year, Seton Hall, winless since a January 10 victory at Georgetown, is left to pick up the pieces en route to DePaul, who will welcome the Pirates to Chicago on Saturday in a pivotal game for both sides. Holloway faces a short turnaround once again to prepare his team, made shorter by the bitter aftertaste of a win that slipped through the cracks.

“This is disappointing,” he said. “I thought we played well enough to win this game for a period, and to lose it like that down the stretch is disappointing. But there’s a lot of basketball to be played. We gotta keep our heads up. We’ve got a good DePaul team on Saturday, so we gotta get back to work.”