UConn men can’t wait to begin Big East tourney

It still hadn’t been officially determined who the UConn men’s basketball team’s first Big East Tournament opponent would be in the minutes following the Huskies’ win at Villanova on Saturday night.

Didn’t matter, as far as Dan Hurley was concerned.

“Any game that we win from here on out is going to be a hard game to win,” the UConn coach noted. “That (first) game is going to be incredibly hard to win. If you survive that, now it’s Marquette or whoever (they play Thursday). And then, obviously, it’s NCAA tournament games. You’ve got to be playing to your identity to the fullest, and you’ve got to play to a high level to advance and win any more games from here.”

Turns out, UConn (24-7, 13-7 Big East) earned the No. 4 seed for the Big East tourney, and it will be old pal Providence, the No. 5 seed, that the Huskies face on Thursday at 2:30 p.m. at Madison Square Garden. Alex Karaban had a suspicion it would be the Friars, even before it became official late Saturday night.

“We’ve got to be super-confident,” Karaban said after scoring 16 points Saturday night that led to a sixth and final Big East Freshman of the Week award. “We’ve just got to keep working. We split with them earlier, so we know they’re a talented team. We’ve just got to stay locked-in for that.”

If the 14th-ranked Huskies aren’t as locked-in now as they’ve been all season, it’s only because they set such a high standard back in November and December. Overcoming a disastrous January where the team’s self-confidence was severely tested, UConn has won five straight and eight of its last nine games.

“We feel really good, just going in with the same mindset, trying to win every game possession by possession, war by war,” said Andre Jackson Jr., who earned Big East weekly honor roll recognition after Just sticking to the script, listening to the coaches all week in preparation for the games, and really just be