Zuby Ejiofor didn’t leave anything to chance.
After a quiet second half, he took matters into his own hands.
Ejiofor scored on his first touch of overtime and had six of his 25 points in the extra session, as No. 17 St. John’s avoided the upset with a grind-it-out, 87-82 win over Xavier at the Garden on Monday.
Bryce Hopkins came up with two key steals in overtime and Oziyah Sellers iced it with a dunk in the final seconds.
Sellers had also forced overtime with a tip-in of his own miss to help Rick Pitino win the 904th game of his career, moving him into third place all alone on the all-time wins list.
St. John’s has now reeled off 10 wins in a row and has pulled into a first-place tie with Connecticut.
Ejiofor also had seven rebounds and five assists, Hopkins added 19 points and nine rebounds and Dylan Darling had 16 points, five rebounds and four assists.
Tre Carroll scored 21 for Xavier, but was held scoreless with a field goal attempt in overtime.
Darling keyed a 10-2 run that gave St. John’s a three-point lead with 5:17 left.
But Darling missed two free throws with the chance to push the lead to five, and Xavier responded.
Carroll gave them the lead with 47.2 seconds left, and a Sellers tip-in with 16.3 seconds left forced overtime.
Carroll fell in the final seconds, and his heave wasn’t close.
Predictably, the atmosphere three days after the rousing Connecticut win was not nearly the same. The crowd, decent in size at over 16,000, was quiet and the team was flat on the defensive end.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
