Before the season, St. John’s and Connecticut were clearly viewed as the best men’s basketball programs in the Big East Conference. They have done nothing to disprove that prediction, finishing first and second in the league by a wide margin, splitting their regular season matchups, and entering the postseason as the league’s only nationally ranked teams.
On Saturday night, they will meet again, this time at Madison Square Garden with the Big East Tournament championship on the line and a chance to improve their NCAA Tournament seeding.
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The teams advanced to the title game with ease in Friday night’s semifinals. No. 1 seed St. John’s defeated No. 4 seed Seton Hall, 78-68, in the opener, while No. 2 seed UConn defeated No. 11 seed Georgetown, 67-51, in the cup to set up what had seemed inevitable for months.
“I think both teams have really pushed each other all year,” UConn coach Dan Hurley said. “It’s going to be a do-or-die game for the Big East championship. We’ve both really delivered for this league in a year when this league needs a game like tomorrow night that all the basketball fans will be involved in.”
Indeed, this has been an unusual year for the Big East, a league typically known for its depth. The conference has had at least five teams in the NCAA tournament seven times in the last 11 seasons. But this year, Villanova is probably the only other Big East team, besides St. John’s and UConn, that will be in the NCAA field. The three bids would tie for the fewest in conference history dating back to the 1979-80 season.
And while coach Kevin Willard has done a good job in his first season at Villanova, which missed the NCAA in all three seasons under former coach Kyle Neptune, the Wildcats are still far behind the league’s two best teams. Villanova (24-8) went 15-5 against Big East teams in the regular season, but the Wildcats lost both times they played against St. John’s and UConn.
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Meanwhile, St. John’s (27-6) went 18-2 in league play to win its second straight regular-season title, and UConn (29-4) won 17 of its 20 regular-season games in the Big East. In the AP Poll, UConn is ranked No. 6 and St. John’s is No. 13. They are No. 9 and No. 21, respectively, in the NCAA NET metric and analyst Ken Pomeroy’s rankings. Villanova is ranked 36th in NET and 33rd in KenPom. No other Big East team is ranked in the top 49 by any of the metrics, making it difficult to imagine the NCAA selection committee choosing a fourth Big East team.
Still, the league can pin its hopes on St. John’s and UConn. In their first meeting on Feb. 6, St. John’s snapped UConn’s 18-game winning streak with an 81-72 victory at MSG in an atmosphere that Red Storm coach Rick Pitino described as one of the best he’s ever seen. Later in the month, the Huskies responded by defeating the Red Storm, 72-40, the fewest points scored by a team coached by Pitino since he began coaching college basketball 51 years ago. In that game, St. John’s missed its final 24 shots and ended its 13-game winning streak.
On Saturday, the Red Storm will look to avenge that lopsided loss on their home court, although plenty of UConn fans will likely be in attendance as well. The teams will meet in the title game for the first time since they met in 1999 and 2000, with UConn winning the first and St. John’s the second.
Saturday will be the eighth meeting between St. John’s and UConn in the Big East tournament. St. John’s has won four of the previous matchups, but UConn won the last time they met in 2024 when the Huskies defeated the Red Storm, 95-90, in the semifinals and went on to win the league and national titles.
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After UConn’s win Friday night, Hurley spoke about the mutual respect between him and Pitino, who won national titles with Kentucky and Louisville and rebuilt a Red Storm program that had fallen on hard times for more than two decades since he arrived in 2023. Pitino last year led St. John’s to its first outright Big East regular-season title since 1985 and its first tournament championship since 2000.
Hurley and Pitino will be on opposite sides for the eighth time on Saturday, with Hurley holding a four-to-three lead. But the stakes will be higher than in any of their previous games, as UConn will seek its record ninth Big East title (one more than Georgetown) and St. John’s will seek its fifth league championship.
“It’s a privilege to be on the court tomorrow night,” Hurley said. “Listen, someone comes out of the tunnel with nothing and someone has confetti falling on their head.”