St. John’s Falls to LIU-Brooklyn
BROOKLYN, N.Y. (Dec. 11, 2016) – The St. John’s men’s basketball team saw its three-game winning streak come to an end on Sunday afternoon, as LIU Brooklyn’s Iverson Fleming scored the final five points of the game to lift the Blackbirds to a 74-73 victory at Barclays Center.
Shamorie Ponds led the way for St. John’s (5-6) on Sunday, scoring a team-high 18 points on 4-of-8 shooting from beyond the arc. Playing his first collegiate game in his home borough, the Jefferson High School product also grabbed six boards and dished out two assists.
Three other Johnnies reached double figures, as Darien Williams shattered his career high with 15 points on 4-of-6 shooting and a 7-of-8 effort from the free throw line. The senior from San Francisco also grabbed a team-high and career-best seven boards.
Bashir Ahmed added 14 points and six rebounds for the Johnnies, while Federico Mussini chipped in 11 points.
Malik Ellison scored eight points on 4-of-6 shooting and dished out a game-high five assists.
LIU Brooklyn (7-3) saw two of its players record double-doubles, as Jerome Frink finished with 20 points and 12 rebounds while Nura Zanna tallied 13 points and 11 boards.
The Blackbirds found it hard to miss in the early going, making seven of their first eight shots from the floor and jumping out to an 18-8 lead with 14:36 to go in the opening half.
Down 21-13 just over a minute later, a pair of Williams free throws sparked a 6-0 spurt for the Johnnies, as the Red Strom trimmed the Blackbird lead to a pair, 21-19, with just under 12 minutes remaining.
After LIU Brooklyn bumped its lead back to seven, 26-19, less than two minutes later, the Red Storm held the Blackbirds without a point for four and a half minutes, scoring 10 unanswered to move ahead 29-26 on an Ahmed triple with 6:51 to play before the break.
The two teams traded buckets the rest of the way and entered the locker room tied at 42.
Trailing by one, 49-48, four minutes into the latter stanza, the Johnnies opened up a 10-2 run to take their largest lead of the game, 58-51, two and a half minutes later.
LIU Brooklyn quickly took the lead, 60-58, thanks to a 9-0 run with 8:52 to play. Ellison responded with a layup to stop the bleeding on the next possession and the two teams began to trade buckets, as neither squad led by more than a pair for the next five-plus minutes.
The Johnnies moved ahead by four, 73-69, after a Kassoum Yakwe block led to a Mussini triple with 1:34 to play, but the Red Storm would fail to score over the game’s closing 94 seconds. Iverson tallied the contest’s final five points for the Blackbirds during that stretch on a three-ball and the game-clinching jumper with 26 ticks left on the clock.
St. John’s will next be in action on Sunday, Dec. 18, taking on Penn State in the ECAC Holiday Festival at 11 a.m. inside “The World’s Most Famous Arena.”