will be a game-time decision<\/a> despite suffering a fractured foot against North Carolina in the Blue Devils\u2019 regular-season finale just weeks ago. Foster averages 8.5 points, 3.6 rebounds, and 2.8 assists and leads his team in three-point percentage at a 40.2% clip.<\/p>\nBringing the Pressure: A path to an unlikely win for St. John\u2019s involves forcing Duke into lots of turnovers and profiting off those extra possessions. The Red Storm scored 18 points off 16 giveaways forced against Kansas during their Second Round win on Sunday. The Blue Devils have good ball security, with a 15.9% turnover percentage allowed, but that rate has increased to 18.4% in the five games since Caleb Foster went down with a fractured foot. Even if Foster returns on Friday night, St. John\u2019s needs to muck the game up and bring Duke into a rock fight.<\/p>\n
Three-for-All: St. John\u2019s hasn\u2019t taken many threes this season, ranking 281st in the country with a three-point attempt rate of 34.7%, yet they fired at will in their first two NCAA Tournament games. The Johnnies attempted 29 long-range shots against Northern Iowa and 35 triples versus Kansas, making 32.8% of those tries over those two games. Their perimeter scoring will again be tested on Friday night against the 20th-ranked three-point defense in the country.<\/p>\n
Razor\u2019s Ej\u2019: Zuby Ejiofor got the better of Flory Bidunga in his last outing, but the competition level is about to rise dramatically on Friday night against the prohibitive National Player of the Year favorite Cam Boozer. Among the many factors in their heavyweight bout in the post, the foul situation will be worth monitoring. Like Ejiofor, Boozer is elite at drawing calls and forcing his matchup into foul trouble with 6.3 fouls drawn per forty minutes, but he also does an incredible job of staying on the floor by only committing 2.0 fouls per 40 minutes. Ejiofor has done a great job of staying disciplined most of the time, but it\u2019s of the utmost importance on Friday night. Of the nine games this season in which Ejiofor was charged with four or more personal fouls, the Red Storm lost three of those.<\/p>\n
Big Pat: Duke\u2019s starting center Patrick Ngongba made his return from a foot injury during the Blue Devils\u2019 81-58 Second Round win over TCU. His favorite number might have been four, recording that exact total in points, rebounds, assists, turnovers, and personal fouls versus the Horned Frogs. Ngongba only played 13 minutes on Saturday, but he\u2019s in line for more action now that he\u2019s had almost a week of rest. Assuming he\u2019s in condition to start and play in the ballpark of his season-average 22 minutes, the Red Storm\u2019s size dilemma grows taller. This season, the sophomore is averaging 10.5 points, 6.0 rebounds, and 1.1 blocks per game while shooting 66.9% from two-point range and 27.6% from three-point range.<\/p>\n
Evans Almighty: In all likelihood, Duke guard Isaiah Evans will get his buckets tonight. This season, Evans scored in double-figures in all but six games, and he has eight 20-point games. Overall, Evans is second on the Blue Devils with 15.0 points per game, shooting 42.5% from the field and 35.8% from three. The important thing for St. John\u2019s is to make it an inefficient night for Evans, as they did against Darryn Peterson when they held him to 21 points on 5-of-15 shooting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to the thread for Friday\u2019s NCAA Tournament game between St. John\u2019s and Duke, where the winner advances…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":682592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,217,231,772,1544,15101],"class_list":{"0":"post-682591","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-basketball","12":"tag-ncaab","13":"tag-st-johns-red-storm-mens-basketball"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116302518875264312","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}