Brutal Villanova loss provides St. John’s an important lesson

Damned if they weren’t going to figure it out again. Damned if St. John’s wasn’t going to find another way to scramble back from a double-digit deficit, throw a blinding blanket of defense at another opponent, find a way back to the bus with a win built on will and work ethic.

But here they were. Here was Simeon Wilcher making a 3-pointer with less than half a minute left in the game. Here was St. John’s, who’d been down 11, suddenly up one, 71-70, needing only one stop to win an 11th game in a row. And if there’s one team in all of college basketball you feel good about getting a stop when it absolutely needs one, who’s that team?

All season, it’s been St. John’s.

Except now, the Villanova Wildcats, a desperate team in the market for miracles to rescue their season, worked the ball around furiously. The seconds were bleeding away. The Johnnies tried to get in front of the ball, couldn’t. The ball landed in Tyler Perkins’ hands, maybe 23 feet from the basket.