St. John's University NCAA News

Boothe missed the late going of the final minutes of the loss to Georgetown on Dec.

Georgetown hopes to spend the last few hours of the year exorcising a couple of last season's most galling demons.

Hey, finally a Providence mention in ESPN's Weekly Watch! Only took 7 weeks! Purdue notches top win of week Cooling Off All the good vibes about St.

The Friars are here in Queens getting ready to play St. John's. The Red Storm is a bit banged up with starting point guard Malik Boothe out with a groin injury.

Sharaud Curry scored a season-high 26 points, leading Providence to its first Big East win of the season in a 74-59 victory over St.

ESPN AccuScore Prediction: St. John's 76, Providence 74 CBS Prediction: St. John's 75, Providence 69 WHAT TO: LOOK FOR St.

In a league deemed the most daunting in college basketball last season, St. John's hardly struck fear in opponents. Nonetheless, the Red Storm beat Georgetown twice in a seven-day span -- in the penultimate game of the regular season and in the opening game of the Big East tournament -- to end the Hoyas' conference campaign with a resounding thud.

When the teams face off Thursday, with Verizon Center hosting the conference opener for both, the dynamics will be different all around.

Georgetown (9-1) is once again nationally ranked, having toppled a pair of top 25 opponents, Butler and Washington, during an impressive start to the season. And St. John's boasts some deserved swagger, too, having compiled a 10-2 start that includes a close loss to Duke.

John Thompson III is famously averse to comparing one season's Georgetown basketball team to another.

Each Hoyas squad, the coach maintains, is unique. Even if dominated by returning players, he argues, each group forges its own chemistry and identity.

Nonetheless, with 13th-ranked Georgetown opening its Big East campaign against the very team -- St. John's -- that humbled the Hoyas twice in a one-week span last March, Thursday's game at Verizon Center was an irresistible occasion for taking stock of whether this season's bunch was appreciably different from last year's.

On the eve of St. John's Big East opener, junior Sean Evans took a moment to remember what his first taste of conference play was like.

A pair of losses to St. John's in March contributed to Georgetown's collapse in 2008-09. Opening Big East play against the Red Storm gives the Hoyas a chance to erase any bad memories from those defeats.

It's hard to believe after Sunday and Monday's Broadway-esque theatrics, but a 'lack of poise' is what Steve Donahue said kept senior Jon Jaques from cracking Cornell's rotation in his first three seasons.

Malik Boothe and teammates turn the tables in the Holiday Festival against Hofstra with just seven minutes to play for a 72-60 victory at the Garden.

D.J. Kennedy scored 18 points to lead St. John's in an 80-44 rout of winless Bryant University on Wednesday night.

Sean Evans and St. John's get extend their success against Hofstra on Sunday, losing to Cornell at Madison Square Garden on Monday.

D.J. Kennedy scored 10 of his 19 points in a closing 18-1 run and St. John's defeated Hofstra 72-60 Sunday in the Holiday Festival at Madison Square Garden in New York.

GAME NOTES: The St. John's Red Storm hook up with the Hofstra Pride today in the opening round of the Holiday Festival Classic at Madison Square Garden.

This year, the Holiday Festival at Madison Square Garden might have a different vibe.

Following their first home victory of the season on Tuesday evening, the Fordham Rams traveled to Queens on Sunday afternoon to renew an age-old New York City college hoops rivalry with the Red Storm of St.

With their first 5-0 start in seven seasons and key Thanksgiving weekend victories over two nationally ranked teams, the Red Storm may be moving back to their glory days.

Bobby Knight was calling Wednesday night's St. John's-Georgia game for ESPN and the old coach made it clear that he didn't know the first thing about the rosters of either team.