Carnesecca Arena
The winner in eight of its last 10 games, the St. John’s Men’s Basketball team will look to continue its stretch of stellar play when the Red Storm hosts DePaul on Saturday at Carnesecca Arena.
Tip-off is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on FS1 with John Fanta and Tarik Turner on the call. John Minko and Brandon Tierney will handle broadcasting duties over the airwaves on 570 AM WMCA. The Learfield-IMG College Red Storm Sports Network radio broadcast will also be available through TuneIn Radio, as well as SiriusXM channel 386 and streamed through channel 976.
St. John’s continues its homestand after topping Xavier, 93-84, on Tuesday at Carnesecca Arena. The Johnnies, who will play three of their remaining four BIG EAST games at home, put five players in double figures and shot 51.5 percent from the floor in their first win against the Musketeers since 2015.
Julian Champagnie, the leading scorer in the BIG EAST, led the way with 21 points on 6-of-11 shooting and a perfect 7-for-7 effort from the charity stripe. Rasheem Dunn added 17, Marcellus Earlington tallied 16 points and nine rebounds and Posh Alexander nearly recorded a triple-double with 15 points, nine assists, eight boards and no turnovers. Isaih Moore went 5-of-6 from the floor to finish with 11 points. The former NJCAA All-American is shooting 73.3 percent from the field over his last nine games.
Led by Earlington’s career-best 4-for-5 showing from beyond the arc, the Red Storm went 11-of-29 from deep against Xavier. In their last four wins, the Johnnies are connecting on 44.4 percent of their 3-point tries and have averaged 10 made triples per game. The team’s lone loss in its last five outings, an overtime defeat at Hinkle Fieldhouse, saw the Red Storm match a season-low with four 3-pointers.
A win on Saturday against the Blue Demons would give the Red Storm its 500th victory all-time inside Carnesecca Arena. Since the building opened as Alumni Hall for the 1961-62 season, St. John’s is 499-103 (.829) in its on-campus home, which was renamed for legendary head coach Lou Carnesecca in 2004.
Head Coach Mike Anderson reached a milestone of his own in the Red Storm’s last game, claiming the 400th head coaching victory of his career. Accomplishing the feat in just his 19th year as a Division I head man, Anderson racked up 369 wins at UAB, Missouri and Arkansas before coming to St. John’s in April of 2019. Prior to getting his head coaching start in his native Birmingham in 2002, Anderson helped his mentor Nolan Richardson logged 390 wins in 17 years as an assistant coach at Tulsa and Arkansas, including the 1994 national title.
DePaul (3-10, 1-10 BIG EAST) will play its second straight game in the New York Metropolitan Area, as the Blue Demons fell on Wednesday to Seton Hall in Newark. Playing without the services of leading scorer and distributor Charlie Moore, DePaul led by four with 11:43 to play before the Pirates ended the game on an 18-6 run. Moore, who began his collegiate career with stints at California and Kansas, leads the team with 13.7 points and 4.1 assists per game. Valparaiso transfer Javon Freeman-Liberty also averages double figures for the Blue Demons, adding 13.4 points per outing and ranks second on the team with 5.3 boards per contest.
The Red Storm will look to limit Pauly Paulicap, a Manhattan College transfer from Elmont, N.Y., who tallied 16 points and 16 boards in the last meeting between the teams on Jan. 27. On the year, Paulicap is averaging 7.1 points and a team-best 5.8 boards per game.
St. John’s is 27-20 all-time against the Blue Demons and has won four straight dating back to the 2019 BIG EAST Tournament. DePaul, however, has won each of its last two games contested at Carnesecca Arena, knocking off the Johnnies in Queens during both the 2017-18 and 2018-19 campaigns.
After taking on DePaul, the Johnnies will travel to Villanova for their second meeting of the season against the No. 10/7 Wildcats. St. John’s won the first contest between the two teams on Feb. 3 in Queens.
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