Ponds and St. John's Limp into Seton Hall on Sunday

Jamaica, NY—The St. John’s Red Storm (10-3, 0-1) travel across the Hudson River to face long-time Big East rival Seton Hall Pirates (12-2, 1-0) for the 98th time on New Years Eve.

Coming off of an embarrassing second half performance against the Providence Friars, the Johnnies limp into Newark, where they will likely be without their new star in Shamorie Ponds, who was seen limping into the second half of the most recent contest.

The Johnnies will be aiming for a bounce back performance from their Big East home opener, which saw a whopping 30 three-pointers attempted with 16 of them being successful. Redshirt junior Marvin Clark II, recorded 20 points and eight boards on Thursday. The loss to the Friars snapped a two game losing streak for the Red Storm.

During all the road games this season, St. John’s has won four of the six contests with one coming against Missouri during the Advocare Invitational, and Arizona State in Los Angeles.

Over the previous five meetings against the Pirates, the Johnnies are 2-5 with the most recent win coming in the most recent meeting against the two.

The opposite side of the bench features the opponent in Seton Hall. The Pirates come into the contest ranked #23 in the RPI standings. They also come into the contest undefeated so far in conference play, with a come from behind victory over #25 Creighton 90-84 just two short days ago.

The seniors led by Desi Rodriguez, Khadeen Carrington, and Angel Delgado combined for 59 points against the Blue Jays, with Rodriguez alone, having 23 points and leading his team to victory. The Red Storm will need to regain their defensive alignment quickly and be sure to guard the perimeter. As we saw in the previous game vs. Providence, shooting three’s can happen all too often, but landing them in, cannot happen against a Pirates team that arguably could be the best we’ve seen in years.

The Red Storm are 59-38 all time against their long time rivals from New Jersey.

NOT SO FUN FACT FOR JOHNNIES FANS: Seton Hall head coach Kevin Williard is 6-5 all time against the St. John’s Red Storm.

The game can be seen on the YES Network, along with being heard on the WSJU St. John’s University Radio Network featuring Joey Jarzynka and I-95 Sports Network’s Bobby Guarente with a 4:30pm launch.