By ALEJANDRO LOPEZ
St. John’s nearly blew a 19-point second-half lead before Kadary Richmond saved the day.
The Seton Hall transfer capped a brilliant day with a game-winner jumper from the foul line with 3.0 seconds remaining to give the No. 15 Red Storm a 68-66 victory over Providence before a near-sellout of 19,196 at Madison Square Garden.
“I felt very good,” Richmond said. “The coaches, my teammates – they believed in me to give me the ball at the end of the game, and we executed the play, and I made a big-time shot.”
Richmond finished with a near triple-double of 24 points, 8 rebounds and 8 assists as Rick Pitino’s team (19-3, 10-1 Big East) won its eighth straight and 14th in 15 games.
With No. 25 UConn topping No. 9 Marquette later Saturday night, the Red Storm assumed sole possession of first place in the Big East.
KADARY RICHMOND CALLED GAME FOR @StJohnsBBall!
“A March feel at Madison Square Garden!” pic.twitter.com/q4eMIevbO8
— CBS Sports College Basketball
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Asked why he’s so calm in big situations, Richmond said: “Just being around for a while, playing a lot of basketball in this conference, and just knowing that my teammates are going to have the will to win. They don’t want to lose. I’m a leader on this team. I’m one of the leaders and we have to go out there and play to win every night.”
Said Pitino of Richmond: “He’s playing really good basketball and we were going to win it or lose it with Kadary’s shot or his pass. He made a terrific shot. He was shooting the ball well all game. I’m really, really happy for him. The thing I love about Kadary is he owns up to his mistakes. Kadary owns up to everything, and I’m real proud of that. He had a great, great night.”
RJ Luis added 19 points and 8 rebounds and Zuby Ejiofor 13 points and 5 boards.
Deivon Smith returned from a shoulder injury and scored just 3 points with 6 assists in 28 minutes.
Providence’s offensive explosion came off the back of New Jersey native Jabri Abdur-Rahim, who scored 27 points including 8-three pointers. He is the first Friar to do so in a single game since 2005 and it’s the most threes by any Big East player this year.
Pitino was not happy with his team’s late-game defense.
“That was a losing way to play defense at the end of the game,” he said. “I’m very disappointed.”
He added: “We’re very fortunate and very pleased we won, but very disappointed in the way we played down the stretch, not offensively, defensively.…
“We didn’t do our job defensively. We have to focus on defense because we could have lost the game today by not doing our defensive job. It’s always better to learn from winning than it is from losing. We learned a valuable lesson.”
Still, Pitino’s team hasn’t lost since Dec. 31 at Creighton — and that was by one point. Before that their previous loss was Nov. 24. They have dropped three games by a combined five points.
St. John’s will have two big opportunities this week to improve its NCAA Tournament seeding when they host No. 9 Marquette Tuesday at the Garden before visiting No. 25 UConn, the two-time defending NCAA champions, on Friday.
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