St. John’s: On the backs of Shamorie Ponds and Marcus LoVett, fun is here

The St. John’s Red Storm, on the backs of Shamorie Ponds and Marcus LoVett, have arrived as worth both your eyeballs … if not more.

Don’t even bother stirring the echoes. Those fictional entities are already trotting about. Need not fear of a sad Madison Square Garden this season, as the Mecca should fully be lit. Apparently not dead, but awakening from its slumber as a sleeping giant, the St. John’s Red Storm are off to an earnestly sensational start to the 2017-18 college basketball season.

If nothing else, St. John’s is fun to watch.

It might be, you know, nothing else. That’s part of the issue, although, let’s touch on that in a minute. For now, let’s get slightly hyperbolic.

Following an entertaining game against the Missouri Tigers on Friday, the narrative surrounding the Red Storm will be weird for the rest of the non-conference schedule. It is important to note that it might only last during that time, as the only remaining “good” teams left on the docket are the apparently good Arizona State Sun Devils and (America’s favorite for-profit basketball program) Grand Canyon Antelopes.

Other than that, it is mostly trash, hogwash, and potential letdown games for the St. Chris Red Mullins.

Even after a good showing against Missouri, albeit one without Michael Porter Jr., we don’t yet know how good St. John’s really happen to be.

The Red Storm feature Shamorie Ponds. He is one of the few known commodities. A legit bucket making marvel, at least when on, Ponds put the Johnnies on his back when SJU needed him most against the Tigers. Trailing big in the first-half, Ponds went banana pants on Missouri, scoring 20 points in the first half alone. Ponds would finish with 31.

For the season, the 6-foot-1 Brooklyn product had been inefficient heading into Friday. After a presumed great Thanksgiving dinner, he played more like the far more data-friendly player he was last season, as opposed to the guy who entered the Missouri game shooting under 40 percent from the floor and below 20 percent from deep.

In fact, his numbers were horrific heading into the game, making it somewhat shocking the Red Storm managed to go without a loss prior to it.

Yes. Oddly enough, it is a positive sign that the historically offensively inept Johnnies were winning games despite one of their few capable players not showing life until half-a-dozen games in.

The other St. John’s known is Marcus LoVett. He’s the only other SJU player to average over 30 minutes per game. Unlike Ponds, LoVett has been sensational all season long. Entering Friday, he was shooting 51 percent from the field and 46 percent from the realm of three.

For those who are not mathematical wizards, those are good numbers.

It is the Red Storm’s backcourt that is the key to Chris Mullin making a run at the NCAA Tournament this season. That should be noted, though, it is flatly understood at this point.

To be Camp Crystal Lake clear: Mullin will need ancillary players like Bashir Ahmed and Marvin Clark to play well on offense on a consistent basis, specifically to help avoid opposing teams from hurling junk defenses at SJU’s backcourt. And yet, the Red Storm will only be as good as LoVett and Ponds make it.

They are the butter to SJU’s bread. The bacon to the Red Storm’s scrambled eggs. The peanut butter and jelly to the Johnnies’ bread. Remove the duo from the formula, and we’re left with run-of-the-mill prison food.

This shift in style, entertainment value, and so on, is a few years in the making.

Previous incarnations of St. John’s featured two specific playing styles. Norm Roberts ran a plodding paced offense during his era void of threes, with Steve Lavin preferring to let his players simply attempting to out-athlete opponents — despite not having those kinds of athletes. In those non-entertaining styles’ place is a three-point heavy, quicker tempo style of offense.

In a direct way, this creates fun around St. John’s. Maybe not a great team, yet good enough that the Red Storm’s entertaining play will overshadow some of the team’s clear faults, resulting in eyeballs turning to the program.

This was on full display against a highly hyped Missouri team, cementing the Red Storm as one of those “sneaky good” teams media members like to tout during random hours on the mean streets of Twitter.

Somehow, despite the talent dictating it shouldn’t really work, SJU entered Thursday shooting 38 percent as a team from three. While I would argue that’s unlikely sustainable, it was largely the shooting from distance that provided St. John’s a chance to hang with Missouri, finishing the game 11-25 from three after starting the game going 2-10.

It is still far too early to declare St. John’s as back as that aforementioned Big East, the big market sleeping giant that is about to curb-stomp programs across the nation. Thing is, none of that really matters this season …  not in full.

This voyage is about Mullin showing growth as a head coach while trying to showcase SJU as at least a fringe NCAA Tournament team. As important as any of that, Mullin needed to provide a platform to highlight how “fun” it could be for high school kids if they want to play in a player-friendly system like the one the Red Storm currently have operating.

But wait, there’s a little more. There’s always a little more.

New York City will buy-in on this team, even if it is only an early season mirage. The Red Storm will steal headlines in the New York Post, have fans in a frenzy at the World’s Most Famous Arena, and continue to rise from the ashes like some famous carpenter in a cave some 2000 years ago.

The people, because they desperately want to, will eat it up like delicious pumpkin pie. It doesn’t matter if the program is honestly back. It just needs to look like it is on its way.

This is a fight for perception for Mullin and St. John’s. On the backs of the wildly entertaining backcourt, while winning some games early, the Red Storm are currently winning this fight. It will likely go down to a decision by the judges on Selection Sunday, but as long as the fans are entertained during these rounds, with the season feeling like a prize-fight, the finished product could be a relative afterthought.

Not exactly Mike Tyson, St. John’s is no longer Glass Joe. It’s the fun, easy to root for Lil Mac. The difference being the Red Storm don’t operate in an NES world. They live in one of the country’s biggest markets, giving them both a benefit of the doubt for growth and a sincere chance to let the entertaining play be parlayed into long-term success.

After that, it will be up to Mullin to beget all that stuff into consistent winning. But for now, this very second in space and time, St. John’s basketball is must-watch TV. That’s an enormous win for the team this season, Mullin on the recruiting trail, and the continued growth of the program from an overall perspective.

Not too bad a feeling coming off a loss to Missouri, right?