St. John’s winning with style that’s throwback to what defined Big East

The only thing that could have made all of this better is if somehow, for one night, the great John F.X. Condon could’ve been transported back to his old seat, courtside, behind the public-address microphone at Madison Square Garden.

“Welcome to Madison Square Garden, the world’s most famous arena!” is what he would’ve led with, the phrase that he himself invented so many decades ago.

Then he could’ve added: “Now please set your watches back to 1984.”

Because that’s what we got last night inside this pulsating, percolating arena in the middle of a mean winter. We didn’t just get St. John’s first real signature victory of a signature season, a 70-64 traffic-jam takedown of 11th-ranked Marquette.