Zuby Ejiofor racked up 14 points and 11 rebounds but was just a cog in the balanced St. John’s machine as the fifth-seed Red Storm defeated No. 12 Northern Iowa 79-53 on Friday in an NCAA Tournament East Regional first-round contest in San Diego.
St. John’s advances to face No. 4 Kansas on Sunday. The Jayhawks beat No. 13 California Baptist 68-60 on Friday.
The Red Storm (29-6) led by 19 points at halftime and by 20 midway through the second half and Northern Iowa never got closer than 15 points the rest of the way.
“Our guys did a tremendous job,” St. John’s coach Rick Pitino said. “We knew what we had to do to win this game. The obvious thing is we had to get our tempo.”
The Panthers were within 65-50 with 5:33 left before St. John’s closed the game with a flurry, pushing its advantage to 26 points in the final minute to win for the seventh straight game and for the 20th time in its past 21 outings.
Bryce Hopkins added 13 points for St. John’s while Oziyah Sellers had 11.
“I feel it’s just being comfortable,” Hopkins said of the Red Storm’s run of success. “We’re playing some really good basketball. We’re playing together as a team. And we’re not thinking out there on offense. Coach gives us all the confidence and freedom in the world to play, which makes it easy for us to play.”
Trey Campbell’s 14 points paced the Panthers (23-13) with Leon Bond III adding 12 and Will Hornseth scoring 10.
The Red Storm blew away Northern Iowa from the jump, scoring the game’s initial 13 points. St. John’s stoked the margin to 20-3 after two free throws by Lefteris Liotopoulos at the 12:46 mark of the first half before the Panthers made their own mini-run, scoring 10 of the ensuing 16 points to trim their deficit to 26-13 after a 3-pointer by Campbell with 8:53 to play until halftime.
St. John’s swung back, building the margin to 40-20 after a layup by Hopkins with 3:29 left. A layup by Ruben Prey pushed the Red Storm’s advantage to a game-high 21 points before a second-chance jumper from Hornseth at the buzzer allowed Northern Iowa to pull to within 47-28 at the break.
“The start of the game, obviously, shifted a lot of the rhythm or momentum or however you want to kind of picture it in your own mind,” Northern Iowa coach Ben Jacobson said. “It just put us in a tough spot. So for me, I wish I could do that part over. Once you got past it, once we were past the first three, four minutes, it was a pretty even basketball game for a long time.”
Sellers and Hopkins paced St. John’s with 11 points each as the Red Storm outshot Northern Iowa 55.2% to 37.9% before halftime. Campbell’s 10 points set the pace for the Panthers.
Northern Iowa culled its deficit to 13 points on two occasions over the first five and a half minutes of the second half, the latest when Tristian Smith hit a layup with 14:30 remaining in the game. A pair of free throws by Prey with 10:03 to play expanded St. John’s lead to 62-42.
–Field Level Media
