The Holy Land of Hoops

There is one Big East game scheduled for Tuesday night:

St John's at #20 Creighton, 9pm EST, FS1.

This should be a track meet and a cool game to watch.
The 17-3 and 7-1 Bluejays are rightfully back in the Top 25.
The 12-8 and 2-5 Johnnies just had a comfortable win at Butler.

After this game, Creighton (outstanding RPI of 11) gets 10 days off (next game is on a Friday night at home).
St John's (solid RPI of 76) has a 3 game winning streak going, including 2 straight BE wins.

Standings after Monday's games:
Creighton 7-1.
Villanova 7-1.
Providence 5-2.
Xavier 5-2.
Marquette 3-4.
Seton Hall 3-4.
Georgetown 3-6.
St John's 2-5.
DePaul 2-6.
Butler 1-7.

Here you go Johnnies. If you want a chance of making the tournament, you'll need to go on a huge run and beat Creighton and Nova. Here's your first chance. This is the type of unexpected win you'll need to give yourselves any hope of sneaking in.

This is a scary game for the Bluejays. The 3s not dropping could kill us against big athletic teams that rebound well... glad we're at home. It's only a matter of time before the Johnnies' talent starts to gel.

Even if our threes don't fall we can scrap out wins. Contrary to popular belief we are a well-rounded team.

Jays will win 74-61

Creighton probably wins by 10-15

If SJU has a chance.
On defense: Full court press all game, as soon as Wragge crosses mid court I want Pointer on him and harass him all game (out of 79 shots 77 are behind the arch, and hits 50% of those shots that`s insane)
McDermott will get his 30, but gotta stop the rest of the team.
On offense: Our best chance to score is taking it to the rim, plus that way maybe we get some of them in foul trouble.

Green should only get 10-15 minutes, as they looked much better without him

My sign idea: "Doug McDermott is the real God'sgift"

Question for the east coasters: how much does the late start (9PM SJU local time) affect the players?

Why should it bother them?
They played 9pm before and at home

I might be proven crazy here, but if I were a betting man I would be on STJ and the 12.5, no logical reason just a feeling. As a matter of fact might be worth teasing down for the odds or actually just the money line.

Will see.

I'm expecting a Creighton blowout…hopefully I'm pleasantly surprised. A win would shock me. Not because SJ can't beat a #20 team. We did even better than that last year. We can beat anyone. It's the fact that Creighton excels at the very thing we can't stop all year: the 3. For some reason we just have every opponent showering us with 3's. Creighton is one of those teams that can hit at a 50% rate one game and not be a fluke, then go out and hit 45% the next game. I think any chance we have at beating Creighton revolves around them shooting 45% from 3 or worse. Pretty simple. If they have an off day shooting like vs. PC we have a real chance. If they make 3's as usual at a very high clip, it would take a career day from one of our players and some consistent 3's to neutralize some of theirs to beat them.

SJ is well overdue for a ranked win after 3 close calls inside the top 5. I'm kind of pissed PC beat them already because that makes me think Creighton already got that once in a while bad game out of their system. Prediction: Creighton: 88 St. John's: 64