St. John’s Prepares for Top-10 Opponent

On Friday, December 3rd the St. John’s Red Storm will host their toughest out-of-conference during coach Mike Anderson’s tenure. They will take on the 8th ranked Kansas Jayhawks as this will be their first home game at the recently opened UBS Arena in Elmont, New York. The Johnnies are on a three-game win streak after suffering a 2 point loss to the Indiana Hoosiers on November 17th and are looking to extend it, but it will not be easy.

Although the Red Storm have come away with wins in their last two games, they have been very unimpressive to say the least. They started off the homestand with an impressive win against Farleigh Dickinson where they put up 87 points as every starter put up double figures in points. But star point guard Posh Alexander would miss the next game against St. Francis, and it showed early as they were down by 2 at half. Although, transfer guard Montez Mathis would carry the load in the second half finishing with 20 points only behind Julian Champagnie who finished with 23. The most recent game of the current homestand at Carnesecca Arena was a 9-point win as NJIT took the Johnnies to overtime as Posh Alexander came back after missing one game due to a “lower leg strain”. It was a tough night for the team leading scorer Julian Champagnie, but center Joel Soriano had his best game so far as he led the Red Storm with 16 points and added 9 rebounds as well. Although they came away with wins, the Johnnies will have to step up their game massively if they want to have a chance at taking down the Jayhawks.

Kansas has lofty expectations for this season and are projected to contend for an NCAA title as they were ranked 3rd in the preseason AP Poll. They had an impressive start to their 5-1 season with a win against Michigan State but have faltered as of late. After winning 4 in a row, Kansas lost their first and only game of the season against the Dayton Flyers in the second round of the ESPN events invitational. The final score was 74-73 as Dayton Freshman Mustapha Amzil made a fadeaway jumper for his only field goal of the game and to win the game at the buzzer. Other than that little hiccup, Kansas has been a dominant force this season and will be a very tough opponent for St. John’s. They are led by senior guard Ochai Agbaji who can flat out score, he leads the team with 22.5 points per game including an impressive 41.7% from three-point range. This is a very experienced Kansas team led by Hall of Fame coach Bill Self who always has his team ready for battle. The main problem St. John’s will face is on the defensive end as Kansas has many ways to score other than their star Agbaji as they have two other guards, Christian Braun and Remy Martin, who average double digits. The only deficiency on this Kansas team is their lack of rebounding, which the Red Storm will have to take advantage of. The key for the Red Storm’s defense will be rebounding, if the big men in Soriano and Chamagnie can rebound, it will allow the guards to push out on Kansas’ shooters and make them work for their shots. Kansas is so effective offensively that you cannot completely stop them, but if you play aggressive enough and force them into bad shots then the Red Storm will have a chance. In Kansas’ only loss they were –8 in the rebound battle, if the Johnnies can rebound and get transition buckets from them then we could have an upset brewing at the UBS arena. The game is at 7 P.M. on Friday, December 3rd at UBS arena and can be watched on FS1. Go Johnnies!