It was tense.
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It was close.
It could've gone either way.
The second matchup between the Pitinos was much like the first one — a narrow St. John's victory that could have easily been won by Xavier.
Ultimately, the 17th-ranked Johnnies made enough plays Monday to survive, three days after their rousing victory over Connecticut.
"We were ready to play, but [Xavier] was terrific, and they were terrific at Xavier. Certain teams cause matchup problems for you, and this team does for us," coach Rick Pitino said after the Red Storm's grind-it-out, 87-82 overtime victory in front of 14,512 at the Garden. "But we came away twice in the latter stages of the games with a victory. I think that's a great thing for our team. I hope we don't play them in the Big East Tournament."
Zuby Ejiofor and Bryce Hopkins came up big in overtime, after Oziyah Sellers shook off a poor shooting night by tipping in his own miss late in the regulation to force the extra session.
In those final five minutes, Ejiofor scored six of his game-high 25 points, Hopkins came up with two key steals and St. John's (19-5, 12-1) defense made critical stops and held Xavier (12-12, 4-9) star Tre Carroll without a field-goal attempt.
"That's what we said, he's not going to touch it, we're going to make their guards handle the basketball and take shots," Pitino said.
The elder Pitino improved to 5-1 against his son, Richard, and moved into third place on his own on the all-time wins list, surpassing Roy Williams.
It marked St. John's 10th consecutive win and moved them into a flat-footed tie atop the Big East with sixth-ranked UConn.
But the Hall of Fame coach wasn't thrilled with the performance.
"Because I was not pleased with our defense tonight, I'm not really happy about 904. If we played better defense, I'd be much happier," he said. "Happy with the victory, but more proud of my son. In the two times we played them, he did things to really hurt our defense, did things to really hurt our press."
Xavier had St. John's on skates defensively for large portions of the evening.
They led by five deep into the second half, and were a defensive rebound away in the final seconds from pulling off the upset as a 16.5-point underdog.
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But Hopkins got two key offensive rebounds with St. John's down two, Sellers got to his own miss to pull the Johnnies even and Carroll slipped and his heave at the horn wasn't close.
In overtime, Hopkins was terrific on the defensive end.
"When the game was on the line, really Bryce Hopkins won the game," Pitino said. "He made big plays for us on the defensive end, and he was outstanding in the final seven, eight minutes of the game."
Ejiofor had seven rebounds and five assists to go with his 25 points, Hopkins added 19 points and nine rebounds and Dylan Darling had 16 points, five rebounds and four assists off the bench.
Carroll scored 21 for Xavier and Jovan Milicevic tallied 13.
Predictably, the atmosphere three days after the rousing Connecticut win was not nearly the same.
The crowd, decent in size, was quiet and the team wasn't sharp.
"It might've looked like we came out lacking a little bit of energy. But it wasn't like we were taking Xavier lightly," Darling said. "They took us down to the buzzer at their place, and we just went to OT with them tonight. We weren't taking them lightly. … We struggled, and we struggled guarding them."
