Final Score: St John's 64, College of Charleston 53
Top Performers: D'Angelo Harrison 21 pts, 4 rebs
Nori Johnson 11 pts, 5 rebs
Oof. What a day. 12 straight hours of college basketball at TD Arena including a loss by the Cougars to the Johnnies. This was a tough one to swallow but the Big East, from top to bottom, is just a different brand of basketball. St John's going to win a lot of games this year but they were certainly beatable with the game here in Charleston. Now the Cougars are 0-1 in the Charleston Classic and it is impossible for them to win the whole tournament.
I don't want this post to be all doom and gloom though because that would be unfair. There were several positives to take from this game. Freshman forward Theo Johnson looked much more composed in his second collegiate game. He played 17 minutes at the power forward position with Adjehi and Willis struggling, played good defense, went 2-4 from the field including a three and tallied 5 rebounds and two blocks. Nori Johnson was another bench player who contributed a lot of what the Cougars needed. He was our only real scoring threat throughout the game and led the team with 11 points on 4-9 shooting.
The offense wasn't as bad as it looked for the Cougars on the box score. We were getting open looks, but no matter how good the shot was we just couldn't find the bottom of the net. This was made especially disheartening by the number of shot clock beaters the Red Storm had. There were at least 5-6 instances where the Cougars played spectacular defense, running the clock down under 5 seconds and St John's would get a shot off and drain it. That alone can account for a lot of mental fatigue.
St Johns had a very specific plan on defense to not let Trent and Adjehi beat them inside. When the basis of your offense is "inside out" things will get out of sync. What was given to the Cougars was the opportunity to drive the ball inside. However, Coach Wojcik regretfully noted in the postgame press conference that his guys were hesitant to take the ball inside after watching the Johnnies set record breaking numbers for blocked shots in their first game.
The zone sent our way was also pretty effective. Coach mentioned that the guys prepared for it a lot in practice but it's impossible to replicate the speed and length of St John's with the guys on the Cougar's roster.
It was a bit of a stretch to expect the Cougars to go undefeated in the Classic even if it was at our home arena. A loss early is tough but now the Cougs go against an Auburn team that was utterly annihilated in the first round by Murray State. That game is at 7:30 tonight.
Other notes from the Charleston Classic
- Most impressive players of the day were Iasaih Canaan from Murray State and Ryan Anderson of Boston College
- Most impressive shot was the half court buzzer beater by Boston College in Game 2
- I made it onto television before two of the games. I'm sitting behind Jay Williams' head, making immature gestures and embarrassing my parents.
- The Charleston Classic might as well add Isaiah Austin to the list of NBA players who were featured in the tournament. He's 7 feet tall with a guard's skill set and will be a top pick in this year's draft
- Holy Ohio. Dayton fans showed UP to this tournament. The only team that sold more tickets was College of Charleston. In fact, there were so many Flyers fans in attendance that they even outnumbered any of the fans in Game 2 between Baylor and Boston College.
- Murray State also had a ton of fans here as well. They travel well.
- Everyone here is still hoping for the Baylor-Murray State matchup. A lot of talent on both teams
- Some of the last people in the arena watching the snoozefest between Auburn and Murray State were the CofC coaching staff, Willis, Nori, Matt, Trent and Adjehi.
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