CINCINNATI — Ten good minutes wasn’t good enough.
Not on the road. Not against a desperate team playing for its season.
St. John’s clawed out of an 11-point, second-half deficit, but couldn’t finish off the come-from-behind win.
The Johnnies, truth be told, didn’t deserve to leave Cintas Center victorious.
Not with how they defended. Not with how they rebounded.
Coming off a 43-point loss at top-ranked Connecticut, Xavier knocked off St. John’s, sending the Red Storm back to .500 in Big East play ahead of Saturday’s showdown with the reigning national champion Huskies.
Xavier closed on a 13-2 run, which began with two Desmond Claude free throws.
Quincy Olivari followed with a 3-pointer and St. John’s dropped its fourth game in five tries.
Daniss Jenkins did all he could, scoring 25 points on 11 of 17 shooting, and Joel Soriano had 21 points and 15 rebounds. But nobody else really stepped up.
More than that, St. John’s defense was poor. Xavier had 28 points in transition and 32 points in the paint. Claude, Olivari and Dayvion McKnight combined to score 65 points.
Xavier was by far the better team over the first 20 minutes.
It was the aggressor, it was more physical, it was more desperate.
St. John’s was fortunate to trail by just four at the half, the byproduct of a huge half from Jenkins (15 points on 7-of-10 shooting). The rest of the Johnnies shot 6-of-24 from the field.
The Musketeers piled up 17 fast-break points, frequently beating St. John’s in transition, even after made baskets. Xavier scored the game’s first 10 points in the paint and held an early advantage on the glass.
Soriano didn’t get on the board until there was 7:41 left in the first half while Ledlum and RJ Luis were non-factors, each saddled with two early fouls.
Soriano’s play picked up — he had 10 rebounds in the opening stanza along with seven points.
On the first possession of the second half, St. John’s got a stop but couldn’t get to the defensive rebound, a foreboding sign.
It couldn’t string together multiple stops and saw the deficit increase to a game-high 11 when Jenkins lost control of his dribble and Xavier’s Dailyn Swain flew in for a crowd-pleasing dunk.
There was still 13:10 remaining, more than enough time for St. John’s to rally.
Finally, with 3:59 left, after the Johnnies had crawled to within two and had gotten a key stop, St. John’s pulled even on a Jenkins jumper. It forced a Xavier timeout, setting up a dramatic finish.
Senior guard Nahiem Alleyne (right ankle) returned after missing the last game. He logged 11 minutes and scored two points on 1-of-4 shooting. … Sophomore wing Sadiku Ibine Ayo will miss the remainder of the season after undergoing knee surgery. An Iona University transfer, Ibine Ayo appeared in just five games for St. John’s this year as a seldom-used reserve.