Injuries and Slumps Take a Toll in the Big East

St. John’s forward D. J. Kennedy stood against a wall in a dingy back hallway at Madison Square Garden, his eyes looking hollow and his immediate basketball future bleak. As he waited for the team trainer Ron Linfonte to take him to the Hospital for Special Surgery for a magnetic resonance imaging exam, Kennedy could not recall the play early in the first half that appeared to end his season.

“I don’t even remember,” he said. “I don’t even know.”

Kennedy limped off the floor with the help of two teammates just over five minutes into a 79-73 loss to Syracuse in the Big East Conference tournament quarterfinals. Kennedy said that he experienced pain and swelling, although X-rays were negative. Coach Steve Lavin said Kennedy had a “serious knee injury.” It appeared unlikely that Kennedy, a 6-foot-5 senior who is the team’s leading rebounder, would play in the N.C.A.A. tournament, which begins next week.

It is a cruel blow for St. John’s and its nine seniors, who helped haul the program from the depths of probation and irrelevancy during their careers.

“It’s going to be devastating,” St. John’s guard Dwight Hardy said, “but we have to play basketball at the end of the day.”

Kennedy’s injury, along with the free falls that Villanova and Georgetown are experiencing, represent the other side of life in the grueling Big East. For every straight-from-Rucker buzzer beater by Connecticut’s Kemba Walker and momentum-building victory by Syracuse, there is a team leaving the Garden with its season shaken and its future riddled with question marks.

Villanova is in the middle of an epic nose-dive for the second straight season. This one was accentuated by the Wildcats squandering a 16-point halftime lead against lowly South Florida on Tuesday night. The Wildcats have lost five straight and look poised for another quick exit from the N.C.A.A. tournament, where they lost to No. 10 St. Mary’s in the second round last year. (Poor officiating kept Villanova, seeded second, from losing to 15th-seeded Robert Morris in the first round.)

Georgetown isn’t much better. The Hoyas have lost four straight games without point guard Chris Wright, who has a broken bone in left hand. Their Princeton-style offense, which is predicated on timing, is running like a tricycle missing a wheel. Only the least-informed fans in the office pool, or those who pick games based on where their cousins went to college or which uniform they like best, would predict that Villanova or Georgetown will win an N.C.A.A. tournament game.

The situation isn’t as dire for St. John’s. There’s little question, however, that Kennedy is one of the team’s most indispensible players. He is St. John’s leading rebounder (5.7 a game), its third-leading scorer (10.7) and a key defensive cog.

“He means a lot to our team, with his scoring ability, rebounding, passing and playmaking,” the St. John’s senior Justin Brownlee said. “He means a lot to us on and off the court. We just hope he’s O.K. and can come back and play for us.”

Brownlee added, “It hurts.”

Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim can relate. Last year, his starting center, Arinze Onuaku, crumpled to the floor with a right quadriceps injury during the quarterfinals of the Big East tournament. Top-seeded Syracuse lost that game to Georgetown, and Onuaku did not return to the court for the rest of the season.

When asked about St. John’s dealing with losing Kennedy, Boeheim immediately brought up Georgetown losing Wright.

“You can’t absorb a loss like that, especially if you have three key guys,” Boeheim said. He later added about St. John’s, “Its difficult to lose a guy like that, there is no question about it.”

It will be interesting to see how St. John’s handles the Kennedy injury publicly. Linfonte said he was trying to stay optimistic, but that was the only dose of optimism in the funereal atmosphere of the St. John’s locker room.

After Onuaku’s injury last year, Boeheim, Onuaku and team doctors said they expected Onuaku to play in the N.C.A.A. tournament. That never happened, but those statements helped the Orange secure a No. 1 seed when the bracket was announced. If Onuaku had been declared out, the Orange could have been seeded lower.

St. John’s (21-11) looks as if it will get a No. 4 or No. 5 seed in the N.C.A.A. tournament. Without Kennedy, the committee may dock the Red Storm, which is clearly not as strong without him. St. John’s played admirably in his absence against Syracuse. The game was back and forth until a few key interior plays by the Orange’s Rick Jackson and Fab Melo — who scored a career-high 12 points — pushed it ahead in the final two minutes.

What Syracuse did last year could be called either gamesmanship or duplicity, depending on your perspective. Whether Georgetown or St. John’s tries something similar won’t become apparent until the starting lineups are announced for their first N.C.A.A. tournament games.

What is certain is that the Big East — with seemingly round-the-clock coverage on ESPN and 11 teams apparently headed to the N.C.A.A. tournament — has again flexed its muscles and shown it has the best conference tournament. But as Villanova, Georgetown and St. John’s spiral, this week in New York also exposed a darker side of the Big East tournament. The hollow look in D. J. Kennedy’s eyes said it all.