St. John’s vs. Old Dominion 2016 Battle 4 Atlantis final score: Red Storm drops fourth loss in a row to Monarchs

St. John’s trip to paradise ends on a sour note as the Red Storm fell 63-55 to the Old Dominion Monarchs on Friday night.

The loss drops the Johnnies to 2-4 on the year as they’ve lost four in a row after jumping out to a 2-0 start. The youthful Red Storm are finding it hard to get in the win column away from Queens thus far as the growing pains that were to be expected this year are still being induced.

On the whole, the Johnnies may have suffered from a bit of fatigue as they had their worst shooting night of the tournament. St. John’s shot just 34 percent on 53 field goal attempts against ODU and only 20 percent of the 25 percent 3-point attempts could be converted. They were good from the free throw line, going 14-of-19, but that wasn’t nearly enough.

Despite that though, they merely lost by eight points, partially due to the ineffectiveness of ODU’s shooting numbers as well as they shot 30.3 percent from the field and 25.0 percent from the 3-point line.

Marcus LoVett and Shamorie Ponds led the way for the Johnnies, dropping 16 and 10 points respectively while doing so on a mark of 10-for-25 with LoVett shooting 50 percent on 14 attempts.

Three Takeaways

The Johnnies are taking their lumps away from Queens

As alluded to, St. John’s appears to be struggling quite a bit away from home. The Johnnies scored 100 and 77 in their victories against Bethune Cookman and Binghamton out in Queens. Sans their 86-point effort at Minnesota, St. John’s merely scored 62, 69 and 55 points in their 0-3 stint at the Battle 4 Atlantis. The 0-3 stint in the tourney is obviously suboptimal, but with so much newness all around, it is to be expected that although there’s talent present, everything has to come together.

Marcus LoVett is still heading the charge

LoVett was probably one of the more consistent players on the Johnnies despite the fact that he and the rest got tired legs by the time the dust settled. He scored in double figures once again, making him 6-for-6 at hitting that mark to start the season. With any luck, those high scoring numbers will continue as the season progresses and he will remain a go-to guy in their talented backcourt.

But it can’t just be “The LoVett and Ponds Show”

Even through a struggle-filled season last year, the Johnnies were able to get production from the likes of Federico Mussini and to a lesser extent, Kassoum Yakwe and Yankuba Sima. Thus far, Mussini has been better efficiently but isn’t posting high scoring numbers. And Sima and Yakwe haven’t fared much better. They have to get more guys involved and if they do, success shouldn’t be too far off the radar.