It’s been a season of what-ifs. Narrow losses and frustrating finishes. Underwhelming performances against elite teams.

But it’s not over. The final chapter of this St. John’s season that began with such high expectations has yet to be written. The final few pages are blank.

Starting Wednesday night at the Garden in the Big East Tournament, the seventh-seeded Johnnies can change the narrative.

“It’s a new season,” coach Mike Anderson said Tuesday, as his team was making its final preparations before meeting No. 10 DePaul in the out-bracket round of the conference tournament.

St. John’s has been close, painfully close, to breaking through several times this year. It was one defensive stop from taking out No. 20 UConn on the road. It was a Tareq Coburn 3-pointer from pulling off an incredible comeback against No. 8 Villanova at the Garden. It fell by just two at home to regular-season champion Providence. It lost twice more at home, to Seton Hall and Connecticut, by a combined nine points. Missed free throws, turnovers and defensive lapses at bad times have all contributed at different times, minor things that have prevented St. John’s from landing signature victories.

“We’re all very upset when we lose games, especially games that we know we could’ve won and especially games where it’s not like we got beat. We beat ourselves,” junior star Julian Champagnie said. “I feel like there are a lot of games where we beat ourselves. Those kinds of games really sting.”

Just a few of those games go differently, the Red Storm (16-14) are firmly in the NCAA Tournament mix instead of needing to win four games in four days to go dancing. But there is another side to that frustration. St. John’s has proven it can play with the very best the Big East can offer. Now it has to do it for 40 minutes, over four consecutive nights.

“It’s do-or-die,” Champagnie said. “It’s win or go home. I feel like those lapses we have, those little mental mistakes we make during the game, we don’t have time for them.”

The first step is getting past DePaul. The teams split their two regular-season meetings. The Blue Demons won the last matchup, 99-94, on Feb. 27. St. John’s didn’t defend much in that game, which Anderson alluded to on Tuesday. It tried to win with its offense. That can’t happen again if the Johnnies are going to advance. Champagnie wants to see his team recapture its “40 Minutes of Hell” identity, play with focus, energy and intensity out of the gate.

“Getting back and doing that is kind of what I think we can do to really try to punch our ticket,” he said. “What you can control is how hard you play. That’s going to be our [key] this week.”

Anderson believes the Big East Tournament is wide open. He used Providence, which was picked to finish seventh but won the regular-season title, as an example. The Friars won a number of close games, 10 by single-digits, that led to a magical year.

“We were on the other side of that,” Anderson said. “Maybe it’s our time.”

As he said, it’s a new season. It’s St. John’s last chance at changing the story of its year.

Athletic director Mike Cragg said St. John’s would accept an invite to the NIT if one was extended. It has also put in a bid to host. Last year, the Red Storm made it known they wouldn’t take part in the NIT, which was played in a bubble due to the COVID-19 pandemic.