NEW YORK – There is that old cliché in sports – something about how the great teams can smell blood in the water, how they have a sixth sense for when an opponent is vulnerable and ready to succumb. Georgetown didn’t need that Wednesday night in Madison Square Garden. The scent that overcame the Hoyas at the opening tip was not of fresh blood but of a long-dead corpse – bloated, buoyant and in the early stages of decay. Once the official will-St. John’s-make-a-field- goal watch ended with 4:36 remaining in the first half, after the feelings of third-person embarrassment subsided and you could actually start focusing on the game instead averting your eyes from the carnage, it became clear how relaxed the sixth-ranked Hoyas were playing. Native New Yorker Jessie Sapp was back at home, running the floor like the free-wheeling maverick guard who lit up the Big Apple AAU circuit once upon a time. Vernon Macklin removed the 10,000 pound “next big thing” ball-and-chain he’s been carrying since arriving on the Hilltop and actually played to his potential. Jon Wallace forgot about his 26 percent three-point shooting over the past five games and reminded everyone that he is the school’s all-time leading long-range marksman with a couple of signature rainbows that arced into the rafters and swished through the net. Patrick Ewing Jr. shrugged off the incessant questioning about invading his old man’s old stomping grounds and treated Madison Square Garden to feats of mid-air athleticism it hadn’t seen since, well, the old man left. The result was beautiful basketball – a fluid, free-flowing, graceful sort of game. Austin Freeman rifling passes from the top of the key to back-door cutters streaking from nowhere. Roy Hibbert backing down defenders and unleashing a bevy of low post moves on consecutive trips down the floor. Jeremiah Rivers staring down Anthony Mason Jr. – who entered the game riding a torrid streak of back-to-back 29-point outbursts – and holding him to nine. There were plenty of questions for John Thompson III and Co. after the game – queries about the legendary Georgetown-St. John’s games of yesteryear, inquiries about Looie and Pops and Patrick Sr. and Patrick Jr., but one question went unspoken – where has this kind of domination been all year? Yes, St. John’s is a pathetic shell of the program it used to be. No, these guys are not the fabulous Chris Mullin teams of the mid-80s, nor the fundamentally sound squads Jayson Williams led later in the decade, or even the over-hyped Sports Illustrated cover kids Felipe Lopez directed in the early 1990s. And yes, Lou Carnesecca looked as if he might cry (or die) when he was introduced at center court during halftime. But the issue isn’t how soul-suckingly bad the Johnnies are, it is how breathtakingly good the sixth-ranked Hoyas are when they don’t feel pressured. Away from the bright lights of Big Monday and the national TV stage of Saturday afternoon, the Hoyas got their groove back. They played loose, and the result was tight. They opened up on offense and clamped down on D. They tried things they have been too scared to all season. Moves like Macklin’s reverse one-handed tomahawk, Hibbert’s swinging up-and-under, and Freeman’s pass to Wallace late in the first half that knifed through the heart of the Red Storm interior defense and into Wallace’s waiting arms the second he broke free. Even soft-spoken walk-on Bryon Jansen let himself go, jacking up a wobbly buzzer-beater for his first-ever bucket as a Hoya. “I think our guys did a very good job of just staying focused, of just concentrating on the next segment, on the next possession, and executing as well as we could on both ends of the floor,” Thompson said, trying his best to be gracious and not start laughing. “It’s hard during the course of the game – or even until [after the game], at least for me, to feel like it’s lopsided – I don’t know how that sounds.” It sounds, like, ahem, a lie. There is no way a Princeton-educated coach who practically grew up on the far end of the scorer’s table can glance up at the first-half scoreboard, see a 21 and a 3, 31 and a 7, or a 41 and a 14, and not chuckle to himself. With the margin growing to New England Patriots-Miami Dolphins proportions, Thompson employed the same strategy used by Tony Dungy for that last regular season game each December after the Colts have clinched the division and he doesn’t want anyone getting hurt before the playoffs, with Macklin playing Jim Sorgi to Hibbert’s Peyton Manning. The lean, long-armed sophomore responded with a career-high 18 points. “Vernon has been working extremely hard,” Thompson said. “What he did out there tonight was not a surprise.” None of it – not the score, not the domination, not Carnesecca looking like an ailing troll – should have taken anyone by surprise. Georgetown is the Big East’s best team and one of the nation’s finest – but only when they simply relax, play and have fun.