Smith’s double-double leads St. John’s rout of Delaware

St. John’s on Saturday looked very much like the team it will need to be as it rolls into the New Year and the teeth of the Big East schedule – at least for the first 20 minutes.

Given a chance to shake off any rust from an eight-day break with its final non-conference game, it completely dismantled Delaware during the first half. In the second half the Red Storm didn’t keep the onslaught going and more-or-less coasted to the victory.

The Red Storm didn’t take much time to find a high gear against the Blue Hens and before long they were dominating on both ends of the court. St. John’s needed just 7:44 to build a lead to 10 points and 16:28 to push the margin to 20.

St. John’s (11-2) led by as much as 23 points in the first half and ended up cruising past the Hens for a 97-76 win before a sellout crowd of 5,602 at Carnesecca Arena.

The Red Storm will take a six-game winning streak to Omaha for a New Year’s Eve date with Creighton. It will then host Butler next weekend before a road game at Xavier. In a preseason poll of conference coaches, Xavier was tabbed to finish third and Creighton fourth ahead of the fifth-place Storm. St. John’s hasn’t won in Omaha since the 2018-19 season.

Both Xavier and Creighton have been dealing with serious injury issues, but for road games like those, St. John’s will need to be the team it was before halftime on Saturday for an entire 40 minutes.

Deivon Smith continues to be a bigger and bigger revelation with every game St. John’s plays. He was the best player on the court and finished with 20 points, 13 rebounds and eight assists. Zuby Ejiofor and RJ Luis Jr. each scored 16 points and Simeon Wilcher had 12 points. Vince Iwuchukwu had a season high 11 points and Kadary Richmond 10 points and seven assists for St. John’s, which shot 61% for the game and was 8-for-13 on three pointers.

Josh Camden had 35 points including nine three-pointers for Delaware.

Smith was the catalyst for just about every good thing the Red Storm did as they rolled into halftime with a 48-29 lead after shooting 58% from the floor including 5-for-8 on three-pointers. They also forced Delaware (7-6) into 10 turnovers. In the first 20 minutes he had 13 of his points, eight of his rebounds and three of his assists.

In the second half, the Hens kept up and didn’t allow St. John’s to extend the lead beyond the 23 points. It shot 58% from the floor after halftime and went 7-for-14 on three-point attempts.

Notes & quotes: Ruben Prey, the 6-10 freshman from Portugal, was in the starting lineup for the first time this season . . . St. John’s did not do a postgame handshake line with Delaware. Coach Rick Pitino had said he wanted to begin foregoing the tradition before the Storm’s game at Providence because of incidents after the game across basketball and in St. John’s game against Bryant. Pitino did agree to a handshake line in Providence, he said, out of respect for the program he once coached .  .  . Brady Dunlap, who had Dec. 19 surgery to repair a ligament in his left hand, has not rejoined the team yet but is expected back on campus well before the student body returns for classes  .  .  . St. John’s fans got the rare treat of a halftime show on campus by Red Panda, the Chinese acrobat who performs a balancing act on a 7-foot unicycle.