Julian Champagnie had 26 points as St. John’s beat DePaul 92-73 in the first round of the Big East Conference tournament on Wednesday night.
Stef Smith had 13 points for St. John’s (17-14). Esahia Nyiwe added 10 points and nine rebounds.
Javon Freeman-Liberty had 17 points and six rebounds for the Blue Demons (15-16). Nick Ongenda added 13 points and Brandon Johnson had 11 points.
St. John’s fell behind 12-2 in the opening minutes when head coach Mike Anderson called a 30-second time out. After regrouping, it was all Red Storm for the remainder of the night.
“First, we’re very proud of the effort of our guys coming out,” Anderson said afterwards. “Some of the things they did tonight, even coming out to a slow start. In the first game you never know how your guys are going to come out of the tournament and play. I thought the nerves were going. I thought we settled early on.”
St. John’s outscored DePaul, 40-19, in bench scoring.
“They were very productive tonight,” Anderson added. “I thought Esahia, Stef, Dylan, anybody we brought off the bench, I thought they brought a certain swag, an energy and attack mode. I thought that got us going.”
The Red Storm turned it up on defense and kept the pressure on the Blue Demons.
DePaul’s Javon Liberty-Freeman, this year’s Big East scoring champion at 21.9 points per outing, was limited to 17 points on just six of 13 shooting from the field.
Next up for the Johnnies is a quarterfinals matchup with second-seed Villanova.