A horrific night from D’Angelo Harrison epitomized the performance by St. John’s in a 79-57 loss at Georgetown. Harrison scored just five points and went 0-for-10 from the field, and the rest of the team did no better.
With 8:49 left in the first half, St. John’s (17-9, 6-7) held a 19-15 lead but Georgetown (17-8, 9-5) ended the half on an 18-4 run. St. John’s missed its last eight shots of the half and fell behind by 10 at half-time.
St. John’s made several attempts to come back thanks to the efforts of Phil Greene IV and Sir’Dominic Pointer. Greene led the game with 18 points and Pointer scored 16 points and collected eight rebounds.
Joshua Smith and company terrorized the Johnnies all night on the defensive end. The Hoyas held the Red Storm to 33.3% shooting and outrebounded the Johnnies 46-31.
Georgetown missed all nine attempts from beyond the arc in the first half but then hit connected seven times in 10 tries in the second half to turn away any attempt to rally from the Johnnies.
“I thought they were razor sharp and hitting on all cylinders tonight,” said St. John’s head coach Steve Lavin. “The balanced scoring attack was an indication of that. Even defensively, the way they were able to limit our transition and contain our leading scorers.”
They used a balanced attack, as all five Hoya starters finished in double digits in points. Isaac Copeland led them with 14 points and 10 boards. They also got 12 points off the bench from Mikael Hopkins
St. John’s still has time to regroup with three straight home games coming up. Next game is at Carnesecca on Saturday against Seton Hall, who are absolutely falling apart and will be without Sterling Gibbs, who was suspended for a flagrant-two foul on Villanova’s Ryan Arcidiacono on Monday.
“We have to turn our energies to Seton Hall and the upcoming three game homestand,” said Lavin. “We are banged up and hopefully over the next couple days we can get D’Angelo [Harrison] and Chris Obekpa closer to full strength. We are going to have our hands full on Saturday against a dangerous Seton Hall team.”
