In Progress: St. John’s Giving No. 6 West Virginia A Scare

Read more at our West Virginia blog, The Smoking Musket.

New York, NY (Sports Network) - Da’Sean Butler led all scorers with 33 points, grabbed six rebounds and dished out four assists, as sixth-ranked West Virginia used a huge second half to earn a 79-60 win over St. John’s in a Big East matchup at Madison Square Garden.

Kevin Jones finished with 13 points and seven boards, while Devin Ebanks chipped in with 12 points and 10 rebounds for West Virginia (19-3, 8-2 Big East), which was coming off an impressive 70-51 blasting of rival Pittsburgh on Wednesday and has won six straight.

Paris Horne and Justin Burrell each netted 12 points for St. John’s (12-10, 2-8), which dropped an 84-72 decision at Rutgers on Tuesday and suffered its fifth straight loss overall. Justin Brownlee had 10 points in defeat.

Upset-minded St. John’s dictated the pace for the majority of the first half and held a 33-22 lead at the intermission, but the second was a different story.

Brownlee’s basket gave the Red Storm a 45-32 advantage with 14:07 to play in the stanza until the Mountaineers woke up. Wellington Smith hit two three- pointers sandwiched around another make to spark West Virginia on a 16-0 run.

Butler followed Smith’s long-range success with a back-to-back threes of his own before Ebanks’ layup put the visitors ahead 48-45 with 10:07 left.

St. John’s was able to keep it within a two-point game, 56-54, a few minutes later, but Jones’ layup and Smith’s tip-in bookended a 12-0 Mountaineers’ foray to make it a 68-54 contest with a shade under four minutes to play. The Red Storm were unable to threaten the outcome in the remaining time.

St. John’s turned slim deficit into a double-digit lead in the opening 20 minutes. Deniz Kilicli put West Virginia in front 16-13 near the midway point, then with things tied at 17-all a short time later, the Red Storm mounted a 16-2 run.

Brownlee bookended the burst with a layup and a jumper. His layup came with 8:54 remaining in the half and then finished it off to put his squad up 33-19 with 49 seconds to go.

However, Butler was fouled beyond the arc and made all three with five ticks to play to get WVU within 33-22 at the break.

West Virginia, which won the only meeting between these two teams last season, improved to 20-15 in the all-time series...Smith ended with 10 points for the Mountaineers, who shot 45.6 percent from the field and made 10-of-15 from three-point territory...St. John’s made 40.3 percent of its shots, but only 5- of-17 from beyond the arc.