Junior guard Cortez Tillman scored 20 points off the bench as the No. 3-ranked Tommies (15-1 overall, 10-1 MIAC) ran their winning streak to 11 with Saturday's 79-72 comeback MIAC basketball victory over St. John's (9-7, 7-4) before a near capacity crowd of 1,610 at Schoenecker Arena. 

The Johnnies, who came in having won six of their last seven, converted 66 percent from the floor over the game's first 23:00 on the clock before falling off that torrid clip and finishing at 54 percent.

St. John's Mitchell Kuck sank seven first-half 3-pointers. He scored 23 of his game-high 28 points in the opening half, although St. John's led just 43-41 at the break. 

The Johnnies made their first five shots of the second half and built a five-point lead at 53-48 with 17:00 to go, but UST kept answering. St. Thomas closed the game making 11-of-24 from 3-point range.

The rivalry game featured nine ties and 14 lead changes. St. Thomas never trailed over the final 8:30 as they closed out a regular-season sweep of their archrivals with a 16-6 run over the last 10:05.

St. Thomas, now 7-0 over a 15-day stretch of January games, opened a two-game lead atop the conference standings with its win and St. Olaf's loss to Bethel. St. Thomas is seeking an unprecedented 10th consecutive MIAC regular-season crown and will play six of its last eight conference games at home

SJU's last lead came at 66-63 with 10:13 left on Tyler Weiss' layup. But just 12 seconds later, Taylor Montero sank a  3-pointer to knot the score at 66-66.

Marcus Alipate's jumper with 8:37 left put the Toms ahead to stay at 68-66, and Alipate's 3-pointer with 7:20 to go capped an 8-0 run for a five-point UST lead.

Montero scored 12 of his 17 points in the second half. Alipate finished with 15 points, Grant Shaeffer added 12 points, eight assists and three steals, and Conner Nord added eight points and seven rebounds.

UST recorded only nine turnovers, had a 32-27 rebounding edge, and sank 14-of-17 at the foul line. Tillman's 20 helped UST post a 23-7 edge in bench scoring.

For SJU, Joe Risinger had 13 points, and Blake Maslonkowski, Alex Schmitt and Weiss each chipped in eight points.