PISCATAWAY, N.J. – In the moments after St. John’s humiliating 74-42 loss at Georgetown, their worst defeat ever in the Big East, a seething Norm Roberts vowed to make his young team tougher.
That toughness came in handy last night at Rutgers. In a game that was sloppy and ugly, physical and brutal – one that Eugene Lawrence called a fight – the Red Storm played without leading scorer Anthony Mason Jr. and still managed to gut out a 52-45 win at the RAC.
In a game that was far more hard work than work of art, the young Red Storm (9-12, 3-7 Big East) saw an 18-point second-half lead shrivel to 43-38. But Justin Burrell stopped the bleeding with a huge momentum-changing layup with 2:35 remaining and the game on the line.
“We played tough, did a good job taking them out of what they wanted to do,” said Roberts, whose team allowed their lowest point total of the season, and showed the toughness so conspicuously missing from their 32-point loss at Georgetown.
They responded by snapping a six-game losing streak Saturday at South Florida, losing Mason to a left ankle contusion. And now the Storm have won back-to-back road games for the first time in Roberts’ tenure, and consecutive league road games for the first time since Jan. 18 and 25, 2003.
“We’ve been getting tougher since that Georgetown loss. We’ve been doing more toughness drills,” said freshman point guard Malik Boothe, Mason’s replacement in the lineup who credited one particular toughness drill appropriately called war.
“It’s a rebounding drill, two guys going at it, no fouls,” Roberts said. “Go get the ball. When you get it, try to score. You can’t dribble, you can foul as much as you want. Just get it.”
It showed. After J.R. Inman’s 3-pointeer cut the Red Storm’s lead to 10-9 with 11:01 left in the half, they didn’t allow another basket until 4:15 left. They held Rutgers to 20 percent shooting and led 24-14 at the half.
The Red Storm went on a 14-3 run, converting a turnover into a 39-21 lead. The Scarlet Knights went on a 10-0 run to cut the lead to 43-38 on Mike Coburn’s foul shot with 2:56 left before Burrell’s basket.
“When players lose games, they start to question themselves. But these last two games we stuck together and got the victories,” said Lawrence, who had 15 points. “We like to play games like this, make it a fight. We like that.”