St. John's and Creighton are battling at Madison Square Garden to determine who gets to sit atop the Big East standings with just a few weeks to go, but the Bluejays suffered a major blow that completely took the air out of the team. During the second half of a tight contest, star center Ryan Kalkbrenner went down with a scary injury and immediately went to the locker room.

Kalkbrenner was trying to rebound a Creighton miss and was fouled before going down and immediately grabbing his right foot. After laying on the floor for a few minutes, the training staff took him off the floor. He spent about four minutes of game time in the locker room before checking back into the game at the under-four media timeout.

Kalkbrenner has been the star of this Creighton team all season and is one of the best big men in the country, so it would be very difficult for Greg McDermott to replace him. Fortunately, he looks to be okay and the Bluejays can continue competing for a conference title with their star in the middle. They still have a long way back on Sunday, as St. John's leads 70-64 with just under two minutes to go.

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Kalkbrenner has always been central to what the Bluejays do defensively due to his innate ability to protect the rim without fouling, but he has become increasingly important for them on the offensive end of the floor as well. Time and time again this season, Creighton has been able to dump the ball inside to Kalkbrenner to get easy baskets. For the season, he is averaging 19 points, 8.5 rebounds and 2.8 blocks per game.

Creighton couldn't afford any more bad injury news after losing star guard Pop Isaacs early in the season. After a huge performance in an upset of Kansas earlier in the season, Isaacs underwent season-ending hip surgery, which was already a brutal break for the Bluejays. Once Isaacs left the lineup, Kalkbrenner's workload got significantly heavier and it would be very difficult for the to survive without both of them.