St. Paul Johnson gets 'sloppy' after 32-0 lead

If you ask St. Paul Johnson boys' basketball coach Vernon Simmons, not all victories are pretty, but he'll take them.

"Sloppy, sloppy," he muttered following a 77-61 victory at Minneapolis North.

He had good reason to complain a little, despite improving to 2-0 on the shoulders of guards Estan Tyler and Roosevelt Scott.

After the Governors jumped to a 32-0 lead -- what Simmons called merely "Johnson basketball" -- in front of North's stunned crowd, the Polars staged a 14-3 run on excellent free-throw shooting by Shondale Strickland -- who connected on nine of 10 shots from the charity stripe, and six in the first half -- and solid play from Charles Smith, who added two layups to his four free throws.

"I think we just got a little lackadaisical," said Scott, who led the team with 18 points. "We just didn't want to keep the pressure up."

And the feeling seemed to bleed into the second half, when North jumped out on an 11-5 run before Johnson called a timeout.

"I just said, 'Guys, it's time to refocus,' "Simmons said. "I mean, the reality is, we're still kids, and their mentality right now is they get ahead and they let up. We're still looking for that killer instinct."

"It's pretty disappointing, because we came out thinking that we were already going to win it," Strickland said. "And then, we had to dig ourselves out of a hole."

But despite the less-than-perfect finish for Johnson, Simmons said he is impressed with what his guys can do ... when they are focused.

"People love to talk about Hopkins basketball," he said. "But we've got three here [Tyler, Scott and Marcus Marshall] that are on that same level.