Riley Miller scored 13 points in a span of two minutes, 44 seconds on Wednesday night at St. John's, capping the run with a four-point play and staking St. Thomas to an eight-point lead midway through the first half. Photo by Ryan Coleman, d3photography.com

By Pat Coleman
D3sports.com

COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. – Three-hundred and seventy days ago, St. John’s and St. Thomas met in the MIAC final in front of 1,200 fans. Two weeks before that, the Tommies and Johnnies met in a regular season game in front of a little over twice that – listed at the fire marshal’s limit of 2,560 for Sexton Arena.

The day after the NCAA Tournament and the end of the 2019-20 season was canceled, the two were slated to meet in a Sweet 16 game.

This time around, in front of, at best, about 25 student workers and game-day staff and people not in the bench area, St. Thomas and St. John’s put on two examples of classic high-level Division III basketball in an eight-day span.

There is no “if” – this is the way the Tommie-Johnnie rivalry ends in basketball. And one could be forgiven for thinking it would end not with a bang, but a whimper.

Of course, you’d be wrong.

Plenty of Division III games have been hotly contested and played in nearly empty gyms, and there’s no reason these would be any different.

“I mean, this is my 25th year between playing, assistant coach, head coach,” UST coach John Tauer said, “and so I've probably been in 55 or 60 of these and you know, I'll be honest, our players will tell you I kind of have tunnel vision, so there are a lot of times in games that afterwards, people say, 'did you see this person get ejected' or 'did you see ... this chant' and I have no clue.

“Once the game starts, you know we always talk about 4,700 square feet – 94 by 50 – I mean that's all you're focused on, and so – the warmups were weird I think that was that was odd when (St. John’s coach) Pat (McKenzie) and I are talking before the game, I think that certainly, that felt strange, but once the game started, I mean the competitive juices get flowing and it honestly didn't feel any different.”

“From a coaching standpoint you’re just focused on the game,” McKenzie concurred. “And I think that’s been true throughout. I can’t tell you the number of times someone’ll mention after the game, ‘did you hear so-and-so,’ or ‘can you hear this or that,’ and you don’t, I think you’re just dialed in.”

Both contests made these teams look like exactly what they were: St. John’s, a team built for last season, and St. Thomas, a team built for next, when the Tommies depart for the Summit League and a transition from Division III directly into NCAA Division I.

But when Zach Hanson sliced to the basket to cut the Tommies’ lead to six with 6:54 left in the grand finale, when Mitchell Plombon followed with a putback of a missed 3-pointer to make it 59-55, and when Hanson followed with a lefty baby hook with 5:31 left to make it 59-57, there was no doubt about it – the rivalry was not going out without a fight.

When Ryan Thissen drove baseline two minutes later and fouled Tommies senior Burt Hedstrom out of the game a little under two minutes later, and his shot hung on the rim and didn’t fall, bringing the Johnnies’ bench to the feet, then letting out a collective cry of dismay, the intensity was felt full force.

Thissen made both free throws, but St. Thomas came down and hit a shot, and the Tommies followed a Hanson miss with a mid-range jumper by Riley Miller, and St. Thomas (5-0) held onto a lead of three or more points the rest of the way until Oakley Baker canned a 3 at the horn to make the final 82-80.

The St. John's bench erupts during the Johnnies' incredible flurry in the game's last 55 seconds. Photo by Ryan Coleman, d3photography.com

St. John’s scored 17 points in those final 55 seconds, but St. Thomas did its job as well.

“If you told me we were up eight, we were not going to turn the ball over in the last minute, go 11-for-12 on free throws, and not do anything foolish on defense, and tell us we were only going to win by two, I mean, I’ve never seen anything like that,“ Tauer said Thursday.

The rivalry dates to 1906-07, but nobody knows for sure how many times the teams have met, or how much St. Thomas leads the series by.

Tauer and McKenzie, the current and final curators of this rivalry, each coach on a floor named for their predecessors and mentors. Steve Fritz, the 32-year head coach of St. Thomas men’s basketball, and Jim Smith, who coached for 51 years at St. John’s, met 71 times, with Fritz’s Tommies taking 47 of those. Both were in attendance, watching their former players coach.

Tauer played for and coached with Fritz, and attended Smith’s basketball camp as a kid before playing against him and then coaching against him.

“Seeing the two of them for me, on an individual level, that was my life flashing before my eyes,
 Tauer said. “To see those two together in such a surreal, empty environment, it’s hard to put into words but it’s really touching to see them there and also just the symbolism of what the two schools have meant both to our community and to our state but also the rivalry and what it’s meant to each of us.”

“They were designated as personnel to be able to get in,” McKenzie said, “and I thought that was really neat, to have those two guys be able to come up here and take in what undoubtedly will be the last one up here in Collegeville.”

Steve Fritz, left, and Jim Smith, right, take in the action at Jim Smith Court. Photo by Ryan Coleman, d3photography.com

And that’s how it ends. Without fans. Without players talking to each other after the game. Without even a postgame handshake, because of the pandemic. And yet none of that particularly matters.

“With or without fans, with or without (an NCAA) tournament, I think their love of competition really shows through. There’s been a purity of the whole thing,” said Tauer.

“I can’t believe there’s many games in college basketball that were as hotly contested as last night.”

The late John Gagliardi, St. John’s legendary football coach who has the most wins in college football history, used to tell people that the game that people cared most about was whether his Johnnies could ever beat Gustavus Adolphus. So it certainly could be true that a new rivalry involving St. John’s could fill the void left by this one.

But the St. Thomas-St. John’s rivalry had almost all the makings of a truly great rivalry in basketball: two Catholic schools, one in the metro and one outstate in a state where that divide is growing every year. In the oldest rivalries, often the schools don’t even agree on what the all-time record is, but in this one, it simply isn’t known. Of 175 recorded meetings since 1932, St. Thomas has taken 117 of them, which is the only knock against the rivalry.

But whether there were 2,500 fans in the gym or 25, the intensity was there until the end.