UConn’s dismantling of St. John’s an indicator of Huskies’ ceiling when everything clicks

Tarris Reed, Jr. finishes dunk as UConn overpowered St. John’s Wednesday to retake Big East lead. (Photo by Jessica Hill/Associated Press)

HARTFORD, Conn. — UConn did not just beat St. John’s Wednesday.

It systematically broke the Big East leader down, rendered it anemic, and handed a Hall of Fame coach with over a half-century of experience in the sport his worst-ever margin of defeat.

Much will be said of the sixth-ranked Huskies’ 72-40 demolition of the Red Storm at PeoplesBank Arena, one in which UConn (26-3, 16-2 Big East) conceded only two field goals to St. John’s after halftime, the last of which came just two minutes and 32 seconds out of the intermission. That will be explained further in another space at a later time, but the main takeaway is this: If you are a coach and THIS UConn team is the one opposite yours in either the Big East or NCAA Tournament, may the odds be ever in your favor.

“Pain forces people to change,” Dan Hurley posited after an historic defensive effort rendered St. John’s into the lowest points scored by a Rick Pitino-coached team. “I think the pain of that Creighton game, the pain of that St. John’s game at MSG, has done something.”

The most notable side effect of those losses in the past two weeks? The re-emergence of Tarris Reed, Jr. after a regrettable showing a week ago against Creighton. Reed played arguably his best game as a Husky on Wednesday, scoring 20 points to add to 11 rebounds and six blocked shots on a night where his counterpart, Zuby Ejiofor, was no more effective than any of his teammates as the Johnnies shot under 20 percent from the floor.

“This season’s gonna go the way Tarris goes,” Hurley declared. “That’s a repeatable performance for him. The guy’s bolstering defense was off the charts. His presence on the glass, his ability not just to have a guy when people pressure around the perimeter to throw it into…the thing with Tarris is he could repeat that. And if he repeats that, we’re not gonna lose many more games the rest of the way.”

“Through pain, through suffering, that’s where you get the true testament of a man,” Reed added. “When you come out on top, you go through the fire, you go through adversity and you come out victorious, it takes a lot for every man. And that’s all a credit to the guys around me, the coaches, especially Coach Hurley.”

A switch was flipped after halftime of UConn’s game Saturday against Villanova, a contest the Huskies gained control of with a run to close the first half and never let go of after the intermission. Wednesday was somewhat similar, just with an earlier and more lethal strike in the form of an 18-0 run to turn a two-point game into a 20-point advantage that, when concluded, resembled the Huskies’ dismantling of Marquette two years ago in a matchup of Top 5 programs on the same floor in Hartford.

“We just kind of went through a stretch of just letting things slide,” Silas Demary, Jr. said. “And when we locked back in all the way, doing the things that we needed to do, our ceiling is what we showed (Wednesday).”

“We’re competing for a Big East regular season championship right now,” Alex Karaban expounded. “And ultimately if we were to lose this game, St. John’s would have a big advantage heading to the rest of the year. So we knew what was at stake. We knew how important this win was for us, and we just kind of kept playing with that fire.”

In a somewhat coincidental twist of fate, UConn faced a similar tipping point two years ago after a loss to Creighton, one in which the then-top-ranked Huskies were run out of the building in a 19-point Bluejay win in Omaha. This season’s loss came at Gampel Pavilion, but the response and the psychological effects have been the same. And when the shark tastes its own blood, it usually becomes bad news for its enemies.

“We’ve got three chances to win championships this year,” Hurley reiterated. “They wanted to keep alive our chances of winning one of them, which is the regular season, then the Big East tournament. And obviously you’ve got Final Fours and things like that.”

“We’ve played well like this at other times, too. We beat Illinois by double-figure points. We beat Florida, who’s a national championship contender. We beat BYU when they had Richie Saunders and they had a full group, we won one on the road at Kansas. We’ve had other wins. This wasn’t our first good one.”