Late Xavier Run Sinks St. John’s, 77-74

Monday, February 17

New York, N.Y. (Madison Square Garden)

6:30 p.m.

St. John's University

14-12,3-10BE

Xavier

17-9,6-7BE

Xavier

St. John's

2/17/2020 9:46:00 PM | Men's Basketball

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Musketeers score the game’s final eight points on Monday at Madison Square Garden

NEW YORK – Leading by five with less than two minutes to go, St. John's saw Xavier score the game's final eight points, as the Musketeers escaped with a 77-74 victory at Madison Square Garden on Monday night.

With the loss, St. John's falls to 14-12 on the year, including a 3-10 mark in BIG EAST play. Xavier improved to 17-9, 6-7 in league action.

Four Johnnies finished in double figures, led by Rasheem Dunn and Marcellus Earlington with 17 points apiece. Dunn scored 12 of those points after the break, while Earlington tallied all but two of his points in the final 20 minutes. Earlington also added a team-high eight boards and two steals.

Nick Rutherford stuffed the stat sheet, scoring a season-high 16 points on 6-of-9 shooting with seven assists, five rebounds and three steals. The graduate student recorded 14 of his 16 points before the intermission. Julian Champagnie scored all 11 of his points in the opening stanza.

The Johnnies dominated the possession game, forcing 22 turnovers while committing just four of their own. The Red Storm recorded 15 of those 22 turnovers via the steal, just one off their season-high in that category. The Johnnies' four turnovers marked a season-low.

Six Xavier players finished in double figures, led by a 15-point, 15-rebound double-double from Tyrique Jones.

The teams traded 14-3 runs to open the contest, as St. John's missed each of its first eight goal attempts to let the Musketeers take an early 11-point lead.

Facing that sizable early deficit, the Johnnies answered with a 16-3 spurt of their own, taking their first lead, 19-17, on a Champagnie transition bucket with 7:36 to go in the first half. That basket marked the first of eight lead changes in the final eight minutes of the period, the last of which put the Musketeers ahead by two in the waning seconds of the half.

Xavier jumped ahead by six in the opening minutes of the second period and maintained a lead until the Red Storm tied the game on a Dunn triple, 50-50, near the 15-minute mark.

The Musketeers managed to keep the Johnnies at bay over the next few minutes before a 10-0 run moved the Red Storm ahead by seven, 68-61, at the under-eight media timeout. The final six of those 10 points were scored by Earlington while eight of those 10 points immediately followed a Xavier turnover.

Xavier cut the deficit to four with a Paul Scruggs trey after the timeout, but Earlington responded with his fourth straight bucket for the Red Storm, pushing the advantage back to six, 70-64, with 6:41 to go.

From there, the Red Storm went more than four and a half minutes without a field, but managed to hold off Xavier with high pressure defense, moving back ahead by five, 74-69, on a Rutherford transition slam with 2:06 to play.

With the Musketeers trailing by one and less than 30 seconds on the clock, Naji Marshall committed a turnover that could have sealed the contest for St. John's. Dunn, who was fouled after making the steal, missed the front-end of the 1-and-1, giving Xavier another chance at a go-ahead bucket. This time, Marshall drove and dumped it off to freshman Zach Freemantle, who sank a baseline floater and gave the Musketeers their first lead in more than 10 minutes.

St. John's had one last look at a game-winning basket, but a 17-foot floater from LJ Figueroa bounced off iron and effectively sealed the Xavier victory.

The Red Storm returns to action on Sunday afternoon, traveling to No. 16 Seton Hall for the latest edition of their longstanding local BIG EAST rivalry.