LI's Danielle Cosgrove, Kadaja Bailey expected St. John's to reach NCAA tourney

To hear Danielle Cosgrove, an NCAA Tournament berth was always the expectation.

So it was not a surprise to the Holbrook native or her teammates when St. John’s had its name called on Selection Sunday.

It was validation. Of their work and their self-belief.

“Honestly I don’t really think anybody but us believed in it and so I feel rewarding [doesn’t begin to describe it],” Cosgrove, a former Sachem East star, said after the team’s final on-campus practice Monday ahead of their play-in matchup against Purdue Thursday in Columbus, Ohio.

The winner of the 11-seed versus 11-seed matchup will meet sixth-seeded North Carolina Saturday.

“We’ve watched as much [film] as we could up to this point [and] we’ve got some more to do,” head coach Joe Tartamella said of the Boilermakers (19-10). “Obviously they play in a competitive league. They’ve got [players] who can really shoot it. I think they probably play more guard-oriented than big. They run a lot of stuff so you [have to] be prepared and it’ll be a great challenge for us. One that we’ll be ready for and we have to play.”

For St. John’s (22-8), the tournament berth is the program’s first since 2016 and the 11th overall. And perhaps no one can appreciate the Red Storm’s return to the Big Dance than Kadaja Bailey. The fifth-year senior from Long Beach was second on the team in scoring with a 13.3 points per game average.

“Being that this is my last year [and we’re] going there, I feel like it’s very great,” said Bailey, a former St. Mary's star. “It means a lot.”

Especially considering there was uncertainty going into Selection Sunday whether or not the Red Storm would earn an at-large berth. St. John's had a strong regular season, including a 69-64 win at UConn on Feb. 21, and was nationally ranked for three weeks. But a 57-47 Big East tournament quarterfinal loss to Marquette made for eight days of waiting and hoping.

And as Tartamella dryly joked, watching teams he and his program did not have any connection with and yelling at the screen.

“At the end of the day you have to feel confident about what you did throughout the year which we felt pretty good [about],” Tartamella said. “We did have to have a couple things go our way, which [happened] but when we look back at the year . . . just the fact that we didn’t have a really bad loss. I don’t know if we had a net loss under 65 or something like that. So we felt pretty good.”

And now they’re dancing. Not that they’re surprised.