New Year's Eve - St John's at Xavier 12pm ET FS1

[TheHall]

‏@JonRothstein: It's not shots blocked with Chris Obekpa. It's shots altered. #sjubb

[Hall2012]

St. John's looked like an Italian soccer team with all the flopping towards the end of the that half. Stay on your feet and play the game guys! Good on the refs not buying any of it.

[Lavinwood]

This should be at least a 10 pt lead going into half. You get the feeling that only scoring a few points while Xavier was colder than an eskimo on ice will come back to haunt us. That will likely be the deciding factor and it's a shame. Xavier can be had if you have shooters and don't give them 500 second chances at every basket. I'll take the halftime lead, but clearly the momentum is with Xavier. I also don't understand why some people think it's trivial to be mad about Stainbrook's obvious no call. It was clear as day and would have been his 2nd personal right away…he would have been out of the game. That's not a small thing.

Also, I can't for the life of me understand why Obekpa and so many other big men are so terrible at FT's…I mean there's really no excuse. Obekpa has zero arc so he doesn't even give himself a chance…it's like he's throwing line drive passes at the hoop. He's almost a guaranteed double miss at the line. Lavin also needs to ask the team at halftime: "do you guys want to end up on the SC top 10, or do you want to win the game?"…so many times this season we try to make 1 extra cute pass, make 1 extra cute move, or try to alley oop it when we have a perfectly good layup. Points are at a premium in this game because both offenses have been bad.

Note to Lavin for recruiting: SHOOTERS, SHOOTERS, SHOOTERS…I don't care if they are 4'11…can they shoot? How long has it been since SJ has had legitimately good shooters all over the floor…the 1985 Final Four with Mullin?

[Lavinwood]

Xavier getting all the calls, no calls on their guys, and a hurt Sampson. They have also been wide open with no one within 10 ft for all their 3 pointers.

Stop making excuses man

Seriously.

For a (Xavier) fan who really has no opinion on any of these new Big East schools, Lavinwood himself has made a case for me to root against SJU.

It's certainly not a fair assessment, but it's what happens due to conference message boards.

Aren't you the one who whined about "New York elitism"? Seems your mind was already made up long before the game.

[NJRedman]

St. John's looked like an Italian soccer team with all the flopping towards the end of the that half. Stay on your feet and play the game guys! Good on the refs not buying any of it.

Hahahaha what game are you watching?

[bmorex]

Aren't you the one who whined about "New York elitism"? Seems your mind was already made up long before the game.

Not really, just don't care about the past big bad teams that St. John's had to play against. This conference is about the future.

In truth, the Red Storm was one of the teams that I had not much of any connection to prior to the season. Have friends/connections to Nova, GTown, Providence, Creighton, and Marquette and I've followed Butler because of the A10. Totally neutral to SJU coming into the season.

[DudeAnon]

Most of my memory of St. Johns comes from College Slam on SNES. I used to go looking for Xavier but St. Johns was always the last name alphabetically so I would hear an emphatic, "THE RED STORM" lol

[Lavinwood]

I think the flop (singular) he was referring to was Harrison being fouled from beyond the arc? The guy made contact with him…you can't do that to a 3 point shooter it was an obvious call. Sometimes you have to sell it more especially Harrison who has a long history of refs refusing to give him calls. I remember last season he looked like he wanted to choke a ref because he was being knocked down all over the place and never got the calls. So considering that, it makes sense to make it as obvious as possible to the refs. If you want to watch a real flopper watch LeBron.

[Hall2012]

I think the flop (singular) he was referring to was Harrison being fouled from beyond the arc? The guy made contact with him…you can't do that to a 3 point shooter it was an obvious call. Sometimes you have to sell it more especially Harrison who has a long history of refs refusing to give him calls. I remember last season he looked like he wanted to choke a ref because he was being knocked down all over the place and never got the calls. So considering that, it makes sense to make it as obvious as possible to the refs. If you want to watch a real flopper watch LeBron.

No, I actually thought the 3 and 1 was the right call- no problem with it. I was commenting on that during the last 3-4 minutes I noticed a bunch of Johnnies hitting the deck in rebound/loose ball situations. Maybe the floor's slippery, maybe the were trying to buy calls, idk, but either way they were hurting themselves because it's tough to grab a rebound when you're sitting on the floor.

[ivet]

Lavin is starting to get outcoachd now. He obviously has the more talented players but I see a lot of standing around and periodic pick and rolls that amount to nothing.