PROVIDENCE, R.I — It doesn’t always take a buzzer-beater for the end to hit like a Joe Louis uppercut to the solar plexus. St. John’s had a few minutes to prepare for the end Saturday afternoon, as a dream season began to dissolve in front of a packed house at Amica Mutual Pavilion. The final 90 seconds passed in excruciating slow motion, in fact.
Doesn’t matter. The end arrives like an anvil falling out a window. The end comes with players wearing the wrong shade of red pulling their jerseys out of their shorts and pointing at their fans. The end comes with the score frozen forever — Arkansas 75, St. John’s 66 — and a long trip home and an offseason that, in the moment, feels like it’ll stretch into infinity.
The end comes with tears aplenty on the home bench, and with probably 7,000 St. John’s fans staring at the scoreboard, hoping they can Jedi-Mind-Trick the numbers to reverse. They can’t. They finally filed out of Amica Mutual and into the unforgiving Saturday sun. It had been such a beautiful day. It still was, if you were an Arkansas Razorback.
Rick Pitino didn’t wait for the buzzer. A few second prior, he walked slowly to the Arkansas bench, shook John Calipari’s hand, offered congratulations. A basketball Appomattox, laying down his sword and his sidearm.
