This wasn’t your typically relaxing flight. Nervously awaiting their fate, the St. John’s baseball team left Omaha, Neb., on Monday afternoon while the NCAA Tournament selection show was starting. And to make matters worse, the Wi-Fi was spotty.
So on the commercial flight that included other travelers, the team huddled around the few phones that worked. While 30,000 feet in the air, the good news came, and the team exploded.
“We might’ve freaked out a few passengers on board,” third baseman Robbie Knightes said in a phone interview.
The reaction was understandable. St. John’s had a memorable regular season, winning 42 games, 25 of them away from home, but some experts believed the Johnnies were on the bubble after falling in the Big East Tournament final to Xavier on Sunday. The selection committee, however, saw it differently.
St. John’s (42-11), with the nation’s third-best batting average (.327) and sixth-best ERA (2.97), was given the three-seed in the Clemson Regional and will open with No. 2 Vanderbilt, a perennial powerhouse having a down year, Friday at noon in Clemson, S.C.
No. 1 Clemson and fourth-seeded UNC-Greensboro meet in the other opening-round contest. On paper, it seems like a winnable region, considering neither Clemson nor Vanderbilt finished higher than third in their respective conferences.
“We’re pretty excited about where we’re going. There’s some great teams,” Knightes said. “We know that we’re good and if we just play the St. John’s way, we believe we can win.”
The Red Storm, one win shy of a program-record 43 victories, has been somewhat shaky lately, losing three of their last five games. They fell to Xavier on Sunday after blowing a pair of three-run leads, and lost the Big East regular-season title on the last day of the season by falling to last-place Villanova.
Big East Coach of the Year Ed Blankmeyer said he thinks the pressure as the hunted got to his team after such a successful regular season. Now the Johnnies will be the underdogs, a new role for this group.
“These guys felt the weight of the world on their shoulders,” Blankmeyer said. “Now I think that weight has been lifted, and they can just go out and play.”
A large percentage of the team has played in the NCAA Tournament before, in 2015, when the Johnnies reached the Fayetteville Regional final, before falling to Arkansas. This team, Knightes believes, is better.
“This is by far the best team I’ve ever played on,” he said. “This team is definitely special.”
St. John’s was the only team in the region to make the field. Marist, the MAAC champion, is the fourth seed in the Gainesville Regional, and will face No. 1 Florida, the third overall seed in the tournament, on Friday.