The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
NO. 1 UCONN AT ST. JOHN’S
When: Saturday, noon
Where: Madison Square Garden
Records: UConn 19-2 (9-1 Big East), St. John’s 13-8 (5-5 Big East)
TV: FOX
Radio: UConn Sports Network, WAVZ-New Haven (1300 AM), WGCH- Greenwich (1490 AM), WATR-Waterbury (1320 AM), WICH-Norwich (1310 AM, 94.5 FM), WILI-Willimantic (1400 AM, 95.3 FM), Fox Sports 97.9 FM Hartford, SiriusXM-983, SXM App 973
KEEP AN EYE ON More than just talk: Looking past all the gossipy subplots that Rick Pitino has provided for the UConn men’s basketball team’s visit to Madison Square Garden on Saturday, there are some basketball-related items that are just as notable.
For one, Pitino has the Red Storm good again. Well, pretty good. St. John’s has been up and down in Pitino’s first season at the helm, jumping out to a 12-4 start overall and 4-1 start in Big East play before dropping four of its last five games, including an 11-point loss at Xavier Wednesday night. There have been some bad losses (a 16-point home loss to Michigan, which is terrible this season, and even an exhibition-game loss to Pace) along with some good wins and a few great near-misses.
The Johnnies have lost to the
top three teams in the Big East by a combined six points. There was a one-point loss at No. 13 Creighton, a one-point home loss to No. 9 Marquette and, of course, a 69-65 loss to topranked UConn in Hartford on Dec. 23, when the Huskies “saved Christmas” for the program and its fans. St. John’s is currently No. 38 in the NET, meaning UConn can earn a Quad 1 victory on Saturday.
Which leads us to our next point: Good or bad (mostly bad), St. John’s has consistently been tough on the Huskies in recent years. After UConn had won nine straight meetings, the Johnnies blitzed Jim Calhoun’s Huskies in the 2010 Big East Tournament and have split the next 10 meetings. Since UConn returned to the Big East, the Huskies have
won a national championship and been to the NCAA Tournament three times. The Johnnies haven’t gone dancing at all. Still, they’ve been somewhat of a thorn in UConn’s side.
The Huskies have dropped a pair of home games to St. John’s, in 2021 at Gampel and last season in Hartford, an 85-74 loss that was easily UConn’s ugliest loss in an otherwise national championship season. And it took overtime for UConn to dispatch the Johnnies at Gampel in 2022.
UConn will, however, look to go 3-0 at MSG against St. John’s since its return to the Big East.
Of course, those were against Mike Anderson-coached teams. Pitino is a Hall of Famer with a pair of national titles on his resume. Joel Soriano is a doubledouble machine, though he was held in check by Samson Johnson in that Dec. 23 game in Hartford with a relatively innocuous 14 points and 11 rebounds.
Soriano was struggling a bit recently, but seems to have bounced back with consecutive 21-point games in a 20-point win over Villanova and Wednesday’s loss at Xavier. He also grabbed 15 rebounds in that one.
Injury update: As of late Friday morning, there was no word on whether Alex Karaban, who played through a badly sprained ankle through much of Wednesday’s home win over Providence, would be available on Saturday. Donovan Clingan missed that St. John’s game with a foot injury, so it should be an entertaining battle of the bigs at MSG. Along with numerous other subplots.