The St. John’s Women’s Basketball team was unable to keep up with the Seton Hall Pirates, resulting in a 66-57 defeat on Feb. 23. The Red Storm returned home after falling just short on the road against No. 23 Creighton on Feb. 19, a matchup led offensively by senior guard Lashae Dwyer’s 18 point performance.
In the loss against the Pirates, Dwyer (17 pts.) and senior guard Ber’Nyah Mayo (15 pts.) led the team offensively, a day where the offense as a whole shot 39%..
The visitors finished the contest shooting 42% as a team. The efforts were led by sophomore guard Savannah Catalon who scored 19 total points on seven makes from the field, a career high.
Mayo found multiple ways to score in the contest, showcasing her skills to draw fouls, along with pulling up for mid-range jumpers. The senior guard finished the contest making eight free throws, a career-high performance without missing a single one of her attempts.
“She’s a physical guard, when she can get to the line it’s certainly a way to manufacture points,” Said Head Coach Joe Tartamella said. “I thought she mixed it up and got as much as she could, she got banged up in the last game, so she kind of gutted through it.”
Turnovers and fouls defined St. John’s performance in the first quarter, totaling seven turnovers and seven fouls. Seton Hall’s graduate student forward Yaya Lops started the afternoons scoring with a triple, a shot the Red Storm didn’t match until the seven-minute mark in the quarter, provided by junior guard Jailah Donald.
The Johnnies’ ability to grab defensive rebounds went unmatched, totaling 10 in the first quarter, led by Ber’Nyah Mayo with four of her own. The Pirates ended the first quarter with a 16-11 lead, and the Red Storm stayed competitive due to their dominant paint defense, allowing only eight points in the paint.
“It’s an effect of them getting the ball more and having more attempts, us giving up offensive boards, lack of hustle and lack of competitiveness,” Tartamella said. “We had to get more boards because they had more shots.”
The Red Storm finished the day with 23 total defensive rebounds, outboarding the Pirates defensively by just six, a margin that wasn’t enough to cause a difference in the scoresheet.
Dwyer added six more points to the stat sheet in the second quarter, leading the way for the Johnnies, in a quarter where both teams struggled to score, combining for 21 total points.
The same story could be told for the second half. Lops again opened the half with another three-pointer, followed by a Dwyer turnover and foul in the same sequence. The Pirates sank three straight three-pointers, giving themselves the biggest lead of the day of 21 with 4:03 remaining in the third before Tartamella called a timeout.
From this point on, the Red Storm showed fight, battling back on a 7-0 run to cut the deficit to 51-36 entering the fourth quarter. They cut Seton Hall’s lead to just 11 with three minutes left to play, junior forward Kylie Lavelle led the team with five points during the run, bringing the crowd to their feet in hopes of a remarkable comeback.
This hope from fans was quickly shot down when Dwyer committed her fifth foul, ending her day and any chances for the Red Storm to lead.
“I don’t think she was overly effective today,” Tartamella said. “[She committed] too many fouls that kind of affected the game.”
One of the biggest struggles for the Red Storm in the defeat was the ability for bench involvement, scoring just six bench points. This was their fewest in a game since the 67-60 loss suffered to DePaul on Jan. 7.
“We don’t make enough shots that are open but at the same time we really need them to hit in games like this against teams that have been successful because we can’t sustain a level of effectiveness based on fatigue,” Tartamella said.
With just two games remaining on the regular season schedule, St. John’s sits in ninth place with a conference record of 4-12, a very different story compared to last season’s 11-7 fifth-place finish. With this, the Red Storm are poised with a difficult seed for the Big East tournament,
The Johnnies will be back in action on Feb. 26 at 7 p.m. EST when they take on the Georgetown Hoyas at Carnesecca Arena. This game will mark their final home game of the season along with the team’s senior night.
To access the full box score from the St. John’s loss, click here.
