No. 11 St. John’s Falls in Heartbreaker to No. 6 North Carolina, 61-59

Saturday, March 18

Columbus, Ohio (Value City Arena)

4 p.m.

St. John's University

23-9,13-7Big East

No. 6 North Carolina

22-10,11-7ACC

St. John's (NY)

North Carolina

No. 11 St. John’s Falls in Heartbreaker to No. 6 North Carolina, 61-59

3/18/2023 8:36:00 PM | Women's Basketball

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After trailing all game, the Red Storm retook the lead in the fourth quarter

COLUMBUS, Ohio– After battling back from a 12-point second-half deficit and nearly orchestrating a valiant comeback, the 11^th-seeded St. John's women's basketball team narrowly fell, 61-59, to sixth-seeded North Carolina in the NCAA Tournament First Round on Saturday.

Jayla Everett put forth another star effort with a team-high 17 points, going 3-of-5 from beyond-the-arc and a perfect 6-for-6 from the charity stripe. The redshirt senior closed the year averaging 16.0 points per game, the most by a Red Storm player in their first year with the program in nearly 30 years. A lights-out shooter, the St. Louis, Mo., native flushed 78 triples this year, which ranks third all-time in program history.

Danielle Patterson finished with 13 points, all coming in the second half, including 11 in the final 10 minutes. The graduate student forward drilled the tying and go-ahead triples in the fourth quarter.

Mimi Reid chipped in 10 points on 3-of-4 shooting and made a clutch basket to tie the game with 6.5 seconds on the clock.

As they have all season, Jillian Archer and Rayven Peeples held down the fort in the rebounding department. Archer finished with a game-high 10 boards and six points. Peeples grabbed eight boards, accumulating 278 total rebounds on the year, good for sixth-best in program history.

In its two NCAA Tournament games, St. John's shot 50 percent from 3-point range, including 54.5 percent (6-for-11) on Saturday.

The Tar Heels tallied the first eight points of the game before a Reid triple on a feed from Peeples put the Johnnies on the board, 8-3. With 1:21 remaining in the first quarter, Everett buried a 3-pointer from way beyond-the-arc to make it 17-13.

The second quarter was a defensive standoff and St. John's stayed within striking distance as a mid-range jumper from Unique Drake brought the squad within two, 21-19. In the final minutes of the first half, the Tar Heels nudged ahead and took a nine-point lead, 29-20, into halftime.

Early in the third, UNC hit a triple to build its largest lead of the game, 32-20, before the Red Storm clawed back on the heels of impressive free-throw shooting. The Johnnies cashed in on 12-of-13 attempts from the charity stripe in the third stanza. A pair of makes with 0.8 seconds left on the third-quarter clock from Kadaja Bailey made it a five-point contest, 46-41, heading into the fourth quarter.

Patterson caught fire early in the fourth as she nailed a game-tying triple. After a UNC basket, it was the Johnnies' forward again, who flushed a triple to give the Red Storm its first lead of the game with 6:39 to go. The graduate student continued to go on a tear and knocked down a pull-up jumper to give St. John's a five-point lead, 54-49.

The Tar Heels responded with a 7-0 run to regain control with 1:19 left to play. Reid brought the run to a screeching halt with a made jumper that tied it at 56.

Back and forth the game went down the stretch as UNC's Kennedy Todd-Williams sunk a second chance lay-in to put the Tar Heels back ahead, 58-56.

With six seconds remaining, Reid worked through two defenders and got an acrobatic lay-up to fall through, knotting the score at 58.

The Tar Heels leading scorer, Deja Kelly, absorbed contact and got the eventual game-winner to go before sinking her and-one at the line for a three-point edge.

The Red Storm had a chance to tie the game in the closing seconds, drawing a foul on a 3-point opportunity, but converted just 1-of-3 from the line and sent the Tar Heels into the Second Round to face third-seeded Ohio State.

St. John's finished the season with an overall record of 23-9. After getting off the best start in program history, the Red Storm earned its first NCAA Tournament bid in seven years and tallied its first victory since 2014.