JOHNNIES THROTTLED ON HOME FLOOR

March 12, 2009


by Zach Smart


Norm Roberts may have slept well Tueday night. His dreams of defining the moment, a message he sent to his team loud and clear before they posted a first-round upset of rival Georgetown yesterday, may have very well been intact last night.

Any further thoughts of the Johnnies revamping their image and bringing basketball back to New York, however, were thwarted just moments into the 74-45 battering they suffered to an undermanned Marquette team.

This was a nightmare for Norm. The Johnnies were beaten, battered, bruised, bludgeoned, and humorously humiliated before a Garden crowd that included SJU legends Chris Mullin and Louie Carnesecca.
The Johnnies apparently never overcame the hangover of upsetting Georgetown in the opening round of this year's new, all-inclusive tournament format.

They came out of the gates as flat as a board, building a Great Wall of China with an overabundance of bricks. They failed to defend the castle on the other side of the floor, as the defensively inept doormats served up 38 Golden Eagle points while scoring an abysmal 10 first half points.

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It established a new tournament low. There was a lid on the basket throughout the first half, and the Johnnies looked like they couldn't shoot a ball into the river if they were standing on the George Washington Bridge.

An exasperated Roberts and a shocked Mullin watched as they shot the ball at an atrocious 3-for-22 clip, committing 10 first-half turnovers as well.

Balance in the scorebook helped Marquette paint the Madison Square Garden floor in slippery, sputtering gold-and-blue. The Golden Eagles smothered the Johnnies' hopes of fighting another day behind Wesley Matthews, who scored 20 points to lead all scorers.

Lazar Hayward chipped in with 17 points on 8-of-15 shooting. Jimmy Butler and Jerel McNeal each added 11.

SJU, which showed no offensive flow throughout the game, fell behind 31-8--Marquette had nearly four times as many points--after back-to-back Hayward buckets with 2:14 remaining in the first.

Marquette continued to jack the score up in the second half, running off a 14-4 spurt which gave them a 50-21 bulge on a McNeal layup with 12:42 remaining.

Dominic James, Marquette's star senior guard who went down with a season-ending broken foot injury during the loss to UConn, sported smiles for the first time in a while.

James, who's been relegated to the role of cheerleader (or de facto assistant coach), watched as the Johnnies had no answer for Matthews and struggled to put the ball in the hoop.

The Johnnie shot a below freezing 18-for-46 from the floor. They were 2-for-10 from beyond the confines of the arc and 7-of-14 from the charity stripe.

Just when you thought the Johnnies were on the verge of no longer languishing around the .500 mark or pull off a pulsating victory, the Johnnies' unleash a stinker that even Erick Barkley and Omar Cook would turn their nose at.

This is life in the nation's toughest conference. One day there is a glimmer of hope that pumps life into a dwindling fanbase, the next day you slip right back under the albatross of inspection.

Losing respectably is one thing. Selling the farm, allowing visitors from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to dance all over your face on your newly-minted gold and blue colored court, is another.