For the first time in more than a month, St. John’s can see the light. With a win tonight at the Garden against Rutgers, the Red Storm, which went 2-6 in February, will be eligible for an NIT berth. The question that confronts St. John’s is if it will be blinded by the light of Sunday’s thrilling 72-71 win over Duke.
“That day is over,” St. John’s swingman Willie Shaw said yesterday. “We can’t live on that one forever. If we live on that one, we’re going to get smacked by Rutgers. It’s going to be a lifetime memory, but at the same time we’ve got other goals we’re trying to reach.”
The Red Storm (13-12 overall, 5-9 in the Big East) have not given up on an NCAA Tournament berth. The only way for that to happen is to win next week’s Big East Conference Tournament. Prior to Sunday’s astounding triumph, such thoughts would have been deemed ludicrous.
But when you hold one of the nation’s elite teams scoreless over the final 4:05 and score the game’s last 12 points, optimism abounds. The players said they turned their attention to the Scarlet Knights on Monday, yet emotionally they haven’t come back down to earth.
“I haven’t and I don’t want to come back down . . . because that game just put us on a cloud that we should ride all the way until the end of the season, the Big East Tournament,” said Marcus Hatten, whose free throw with no time left clinched the dramatic win. “Hopefully we can put together a string of wins in the Big East Tournament and make the NCAA playoffs.”
First things first. The Scarlet Knights (12-14, 4-10) have their own motivation. They must win tonight’s game and their regular-season finale at Syracuse and hope West Virginia (13-14, 4-11) loses its last game against Virginia Tech on Saturday to qualify for the conference tournament.
Rutgers has yet to win a Big East road game (0-6) this season and whatever magic dust it had left might have been sprinkled on Notre Dame in Saturday’s 95-82 win, a game in which Rutgers made 11-of-18 3s. Another sizzling shooting performance like that and the Red Storm will have to win their regular-season finale at Miami to play another game on the Garden floor, where they shocked Duke.
“[We] can’t look back,” Hatten said in his best Satchel Paige imitation. “You can never look back. Because if you look back, you’re in the past and the present will sneak up on you and you won’t know what hit you.”
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Sources told The Post that 7-foot-2 Rice center Shagari Alleyne, who has verbally committed to Rutgers, is reconsidering his decision and has contacted St. John’s. The Red Storm have one remaining scholarship they want to use on a big man. After the Duke win, the Red Storm’s RPI soared from 103 to 86.