It's kind of funny but with the poor performances of Cincinati and Notre Dame, two wins that coach claimed were statement wins for the "youngest team ever at St. Johns and the youngest team in America", our most impressive victory of the season may have been against Florida Golf Coast. Who would have thought that at the time? Kind of reminds me when Louie's ( whose St. john's ) team was not quite prepared for their meeting with Georgetown in the 1984 final four, who anointed Georgetown as the greatest college team of all time, and who subsequently lost to Villanova in the championship game.
There are no dominant teams in NCAA BB this season, and the gap between mid majors and big conference play has never been narrower. Our season still stands as what it is, a team that isn't quite there yet. You could replay many of these first round games, and get a different outcome.
Looie's (not Louie's) 1985 (not 1984) Final Four loss to Georgetown had nothing to do with preparation. Georgetown, after the early season loss to SJU in Landover, made the appropriate adjustments. They dogged Berry and Mullin, and dared anyone else to beat them. We couldn't, because Wennington, who always played reasonably well against Ewing, wasn't enough. Because Moses was merely adequate and not great. Because Willie Glass couldn't step up enough. BEcause Shelton Jones and Mark Jackson weren't quite ready to be impact players as freshmen. I'm convinced we could have replayed Gtown ten more times, and probably lost 9 games. The best possible outcome would have been for St. John's to have drawn Memphis St. in the first Final Four game, and have Nova knock off G'town with that performance. We handled Nova quite well that season. Woulda, coulda, shoulda - it all doesn't matter.
Villanova quite amazingly, played perhaps the greatest game in NCAA finals history, shooting something like 70% from the field. Still the game was somewhat close, a testament to Georgetown's greatness. Villanova matched up extremely well with Georgetown, always played them well in any case. The greatest part of that game was watching Georgetown players melt down at the end, committing cheap shot fouls, and exiting classless. The memorable thug foul was a Georgetown player pulling a Nova player by the hips down on top of him to attempt to draw an offensive foul, and as the Nova player fell, tried to knee him in the groin.
As much as I still dislike Georgetown, never wamred to Ewing with good reason, those John Thompson teams were great, among the best ever, and perhaps the best defensive team ever. When they swarmed to open the second half, the best teams in the country crumbled.