St. John’s shows its potential in win over Utah as defense impresses

CHARLESTON, S.C. — This time, St. John’s didn’t run out of gas.

This time, there wasn’t only a response, but a knockout punch.

In Rick Pitino’s fifth game as the Johnnies coach, the team experts projected to be one of the better squads in the Big East showed its potential.

Ball movement was terrific.

The defense stepped up in big moments.

There was balanced scoring.

Most of all, St. John’s looked like a team rather than a bunch of individuals. T

he result was a morale-boosting, 91-82 victory over Utah at TD Arena and a third-place finish in the Charleston Classic on Sunday night.

The Johnnies put the game away with a 16-5 run late in the second half, turning a six-point lead into a 17-point bulge.

Fittingly, four different players scored in that run, and five different players reached double figures led by Daniss Jenkins’ 19 points and eight assists.

Jordan Dingle, gaining confidence by the game, had 18 points and four assists.

Chris Ledlum followed with 15 points and nine rebounds and Joel Soriano notched 12 points, 15 rebounds and two blocks.

Nahiem Alleyne, who was buried at the start of the tournament, came off the bench to score 10 points and add three assists.

Most noteworthy, however, was the defense.

St. John’s held the sharpshooting Utes to 4 of 11 on 3-pointers after the break and outrebounded the far bigger opponents by 10.

After running out of gas against Dayton on Friday, St. John’s had the finishing power to beat a team that nearly upset sixth-ranked Houston on Friday.

Like the Dayton loss on Friday, St. John’s played very well for the first 20 minutes.

It shot it as well as it has all season, sinking eight 3-pointers in the first half.

It took advantage of its athleticism advantage, scoring 14 points in transition.

It led by as many as 13, and took a nine-point edge into the break.

There was a lot to like, from Dingle and Ledlum combining for 19 points in the stanza to Jenkins’ five assists compared to just one turnover and the Johnnies’ winning the battle on the glass by four against the much bigger Utes.

The momentum didn’t carry over.

Utah scored the first 11 points of the second half, taking advantage of four St. John’s turnovers in the first 2:22 of the period.

The Johnnies’ first basket after intermission came on a Ledlum drive 3:45 in.

That seemed to jump-start them, kick-starting a 19-6 run that included a highlight-reel Dingle dunk as the shot clock expired.

He followed that with a 3-pointer and Nahiem Alleyne added a step-back 3 to push the lead to six at the under-12 timeout.

It was an 11-point game after Alleyne found Soriano for an alley-oop slam with less than 10 minutes to go.

Utah made a few runs, but the lead was never really in danger from there. In the final minutes, there were, “Let’s go Johnnies” chants.

In the fifth game of the season, the team everyone expected to see showed up.