COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. - As the Saint John's University basketball team prepared for the inaugural MIAC playoffs 40 years ago this month, momentum did not appear to be on the Johnnies' side.
 
Head coach Jim Smith and his team ended the 1984-85 regular season with three staggering setbacks – falling 65-61 to archrival St. Thomas on Feb. 16, 59-55 at home to Hamline on Feb. 18 and 62-50 at Augsburg on Feb. 20.
 
The losses dropped the Johnnies into a three-way tie for second place in the final MIAC standings, making them the No. 4 seed in the four-team field that made up the conference's first postseason.
 
That meant a return trip to Augsburg to face the top-seeded Auggies in a semifinal matchup just 48 hours later.
 
"When you lose like that, it gives you a little incentive to come back," Smith recalled. "The whole deal is how you respond to the challenge and those guys responded great. They really dug down and played well."
 
Indeed they did.
 
Augsburg entered the playoffs ranked No. 7 in the nation in NCAA Division III and led the MIAC in scoring with an average of over 80 points per game.
 
Leading the way was future Auggies head coach Brian Ammann. The senior from Richfield had just wrapped up his third-straight conference scoring crown and boasted well over 2,200 career points. He'd score 29 against SJU in that semifinal matchup, but the Johnnies held the rest of his team to just 19 in a 53-48 upset.
 
The 48 points were 14 fewer than Augsburg's previous season low.
 
"We were pretty down at practice Thursday," SJU post Dean Mandel, an All-MIAC first-team pick that season, told the St. Cloud Times afterward. "(Smith) got everybody together and said that if we didn't want to play, we should just stay home."
 
Instead, the Johnnies came out and played inspired basketball – including senior wing Eric Prestrud, who led his team with 19 points.
 
"Coach said that the 62 we gave up Wednesday (against the Auggies) was too much," Prestrud told the Times. "He said they shouldn't even score 50 on you."
 
They didn't. But there was no time to rest on any laurels. SJU was back in action 24 hours later, this time on the road at Hamline in the conference title game – the team's sixth contest in 11 days. The second-seeded Pipers – who had defeated the Johnnies just five days before – topped Saint Mary's 66-62 in the other semifinal matchup.
 
Hamline – which also edged SJU 74-72 in overtime on Jan. 19 in St. Paul – entered play having won 13 of its past 15 games. But, as had been the case the night before, past history had no bearing on the outcome as the Johnnies mounted an 8-0 run late to beat the Pipers 55-47 and earn the MIAC's first-ever automatic bid to the NCAA Division III playoffs.
 
Prestrud again led the way with 12 points.
 
"That team showed such great resilience and such great adaptability," Smith said looking back. "They had a real desire to redeem themselves after the way the regular season ended, and they did. I was so proud of them. They did a fantastic job."
 
After the title-game victory, Smith's team was bound for Nebraska and a first-round NCAA regional matchup against top-ranked Nebraska Wesleyan on March 1 in Lincoln.
 
There, the magic came to an end in a 74-56 setback, followed by an 80-70 loss to Redlands (Calif.) in the region's third-place game the following day. That meant SJU finished the season 16-12 overall.
 
"Nebraska Wesleyan just had a little too much power," said Smith, whose team's flight home was rerouted to Chicago where they were stuck after a snowstorm closed the airport in the Twin Cities. "They were a really great team with two or three Division I transfers, as I recall. They were loaded.
 
"But our team that year was a really good group of guys. They could sure play defense, and they showed it (in the MIAC tournament). That was how we got as far as we did."

90 years ago (1935)
Future U.S. Sen. Eugene McCarthy had a pair of goals and Francis Weber had three as the SJU hockey team defeated Macalester 2-1 and St. Thomas 4-1 on Feb. 18 in St. Paul.

The pair of victories wrapped up the first MIAC title in program history.