The St. John’s offense continues to struggle with Creighton running the Red Storm out of Omaha, 104-76.
On dollar beer night in Omaha, Nebraska, it was the Red Storm faithful that needed the affordable brew in order to get through this one. It’s like the Villanova game never ended except Creighton can score.
Posh was out with ankle sprain, and what was one almost too deep of a backcourt turned into a pretty thin unit.
In the first half the offense looked bad. The Johnnies were able to convert on a few bad three, hitting 4 of 6 in the first half. Otherwise, with the Red Storm only attempting 12 shots at the rim, the rest of the 23 shot attempts were inefficient, contested midrange jumpers.
AJ Storr knocked down 3 of the 4 made threes for the Red Storm in the first half. It was only fitting that the made ugly threes came from jumpers with a corkscrew rotation. Storr finished the half as the leading scorer with 16 points (6-10 FG, 3-4 3PT), to go along with a rebound and an assist.
Joel Soriano had a quiet first half in part due to foul trouble as well as minimal post ups deserving of an entry pass. Soriano had only 4 points (2-5 FG) and 1 rebound at the break.
The Johnnies weren’t able to accomplish much defensively either. We got to see Creighton move the ball the way we hoped the Red Storm would this year, with the Bluejays having 11 assists on 20 made field goals.
Despite St. John’s shortcomings on both ends of the floor, they were fortunate to go into the half down only 13 points by a score of 52-39.
In short, it didn’t get better in the second half, but our dedicated readers deserve the option of reading 300 more words or so.
Usually when St. John’s loses, the other team goes for a 10-o run or better and the rest of the game feels like a formality. Tonight, Creighton had a 7-0 run early in the first half, but otherwise, the game didn’t get out of hand on one run.
Also oddly enough, Creighton didn’t light it up from deep. They shot a ho-hum 11 of 30 from three in the contest.
The big difference was at the free throw line. Creighton had more than twice as many made free throws as St. John’s. For a Red Storm team that struggles to shoot from three, they don’t create contact in their drives to the basket.
Coach Mike Anderson waited until there were 5 minutes to play before bringing in Drissa Traore, but beyond that, the deep bench didn’t come in until Creighton put up 100 points and there was less than a minute left.
With minimal minutes from the deep bench, the buzzer sounded with St. John’s falling to Creighton, 104-76.
Next, the Red Storm take on Georgetown in Madison Square Garden on Sunday at 2:00 PM in an effort to end St. John’s second losing streak of the season.
St. John’s Red Storm
AJ Storr: 23 points (9-16 FG, 3-5 3PT), 2 rebounds, 2 assists
Joel Soriano: 18 points (7-11 FG), 9 rebounds, 2 assists
David Jones: 13 points (5-8 FG, 1-1 3PT), 5 rebounds, 1 assist
Creighton Bluejays
Baylor Scheierman: 17 points (5-12 FG, 3-7 3PT), 10 rebounds, 6 assists
Ryan Kalkbrenner: 16 points (7-8 FG, 0-1 3PT), 5 rebounds, 1 assist