St. John's comes up short in final minute against No. 5 UConn

HARTFORD — So close.

St. John’s nearly caused a stir in the college basketball world on Saturday night in its Big East showdown with defending national champion and No. 5-ranked Connecticut. But with a chance to tie the score each time, Chris Ledlum missed two free throws with 17.7 seconds left and Daniss Jenkins missed a three-pointer with eight seconds to play, and the Huskies escaped with a 69-65 victory before a sellout crowd of 15,564 at XL Center.

St. John’s (8-4, 1-1) had a two-point lead with 4:15 to play but scored only two points the rest of the way as UConn (11-2, 1-1) came back to win.

Joel Soriano had 14 points and Jenkins added 13  for St. John’s. Samson Johnson, playing for injured Donovan Clingan, had 16 points and Cam Spencer and Tristen Newton had 15 each for UConn.

UConn snapped a 63-63 tie when Jenkins’ entry pass was picked off and Newton took it the length of the floor for a layup. Ledlum missed a jumper and Hassan Diarra finished the resulting fast break with a layup for a 67-63 lead with 1:59 left. But St. John’s was not done.

Soriano put in a one-hander in the lane to make the margin two and, after a Red Storm defensive stand, Ledlum was fouled with 17.7 seconds left, but he missed two free throws. Newton hit a free throw with 16 seconds remaining to make it a three-point game before Jenkins missed his three, and Diarra sank another with five seconds left.

Connecticut erased St. John’s six-point halftime lead early in the second half with a 10-0 run capped by a pair of free throws by Cam Spencer with 17:27 to play for a 36-34 lead. It then kept the pressure on with three-point shooting and aggressive play to get to the free-throw line, putting the Red Storm in some of the toughest foul trouble they have faced.

Soriano went to the bench after picking up a fourth foul with 12:18 to play and didn’t return until there was 7:15 left in the game.

St. John’s trailed by as five twice in the second half before the final stretch, last at 58-53 on a pair of free throws by Stephon Castle with 6:30 to play before it rallied to tie the score.

On consecutive possessions, Jordan Dingle made a three-pointer off an offensive rebound by Jenkins and Glenn Taylor made a three-pointer off a kick- out from  Ledlum for a 63-61 Storm lead. Castle answered with a putback to tie it at 63-63 with 3:31 left.

The hostile environment seemed to put St. John’s on its heels in the first minutes of the game before it rode a zone defense back into the game, quieted the crowd and outplayed the Huskies to a 32-26 halftime lead. For the first 20 minutes, the Red Storm held UConn to 43% shooting, including 1-for-7 on three-point attempts.

On the other end, they overcame 1-for-9 three-point shooting by getting to the line to make 9 of 11 free throws and committed only two turnovers.

Connecticut announced earlier in the day that the 7-2  Clingan would be sidelined for three to four weeks with a foot injury, and he was in a walking boot when the Huskies came out for warmups. But any belief that UConn would suffer drastically with  Johnson moving into the starting lineup seemed to vanish early as he scored six of its first eight points.

The tide began to turn in St. John’s direction when Pitino had his team switch to a zone defense from its standard man-to-man after Solomon Bell’s three-pointer put the Huskies up 11-3. The zone defense that had been so effective in Wednesday’s win over Xavier again was effective, with the Red Storm playing it with tenacious intensity.

St. John’s went on a 19-6 run with points coming from six different players, and when Jenkins found Soriano for a layup with 5:47 left in the half, the Storm had a 22-17 lead.