I'll start by saying that Lavin made the right choice by coming to St. John's University. To me, it's easy to see that this school can recruit itself. These players can either stay close to home or come from out of state to play in the Garden a.k.a. the Mecca of basketball. They also get to play for a well known and good coach in Lavin.
In brief, I think St. John's is for real this year. They are just 6-5 in the Big East but they have plenty of quality victories. They beat then #3 Duke by 15 points. They've beaten both Notre Dame and Georgetown at home. Then, like I said, they beat the Connecticut Huskies last night by 17.
I think this team gets its advantage with leadership. A senior-laden group led by guard Dwight Hardy who is averaging 16.6 points per game after his 33 against UConn last night. Hardy also dropped 26 on America's Duke Blue Devils.
The Storm also have some decent post play with Justin Brownlee grabbing five boards a game and shooting 49% from the field and the big-bodies in Justin Burrell (not the Justin Borrell we all love) and Sean Evans coming off the bench.
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| Dwight Hardy and The Storm will be dancing come March. |
They have a pretty favorable Big East schedule for the stretch run that will help their case. They get Pitt just once this year and it's at home. The toughest game other than that will be the trip to Villanova on Feb. 26th.
I could see the Storm making a push into the Sweet 16 but then again, they might be one of those teams that get all this hype and become the "sexy pick" just to lay an egg to a team like VCU or Valparaiso. We'll have to wait and see what they do, on their home floor, in Big East tournament to get a good indicator.
-Mikko
