St. John's surpasses UConn as the Big East's team to beat with victory at the Garden
St. John's head coach Rick Pitino looks on in the second half of a Big East men’s basketball game against UConn at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, Feb. 23, 2025. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
The Big East changed hands on Sunday afternoon at the Garden. In the previous two seasons — maybe even longer — it unquestionably belonged to Connecticut. Now it is St. John’s to lose.
Understand that this wasn’t a passing of the torch. The 10th-ranked Red Storm’s 89-75 demolition of UConn before a sellout crowd of 19,812 was more like the torch being ripped out of UConn’s hands. St. John’s led by 18 at halftime and Connecticut never got closer than nine.
St. John’s, which improved to 24-4 overall and 15-2 in the conference, has a two-game lead with three games remaining and continues to look stronger almost every time it takes the court. The Red Storm can clinch a share of the Big East regular-season title with a win at Butler on Wednesday. They can capture their first outright championship in 40 years by toppling the Bulldogs and getting past Seton Hall next weekend at the Garden.
“We want this Big East crown badly, not only for the players but for the fans who came back like I never expected,” coach Rick Pitino said. “So we’re very excited about being in the hunt . . . Winning the Big East would mean a lot.”
Another interesting thing also happened on Sunday. St. John’s reclaimed the Garden from the Huskies, who had won eight straight games there and whose fans had built a reputation for turning the environment into a home away from home.
No St. John’s fan has forgotten when UConn coach Dan Hurley declared: “This is our place — we own MSG.” And that came through as the Red Storm faithful were the overwhelming majority (the UConn fans who did show up were pretty quiet for most of the game).
Pitino always wants his teams playing their very best in late February and March, and that’s what he’s getting. He called his team’s effort against the two-time defending national champion “our best game of the season.”
“[I] can just see in how hard we practice, we’re getting better every day,” Aaron Scott said. “And that’s just the key: 1% better every day.”
“I think we could win every game,” Deivon Smith said. “Even the games we lost, we’re hard on ourselves because we’re only losing by a point or so . . . So it’s a super-special team. We’re making history almost every game.”
Even Hurley had plaudits for St. John’s after it swept UConn in the season series for the first time since the 1999-2000 season, when the Red Storm last won the conference tournament.
“From a defensive standpoint, you know, they’re . . . elite,” Hurley said. “They’ve got a championship-level defense. They have championship-level offensive rebounding. And obviously, how their season goes from here is going to, in large part, come down to being able to make enough shots from the perimeter.
“It’s hard for me to project what they’re going to be able to do, but they’ve had a dominant Big East regular season. It’s hard to prepare for their physicality and their defense. If you have a defense like that, it’s tough to beat.”
About that three-point shooting that’s been a season-long concern? That too may be coming around. St. John’s shot 43% from beyond the arc in Wednesday’s win at DePaul and 42% against the Huskies.
If there is something to worry about right now, it might be Kadary Richmond. It’s a strange thing to say after he had 11 of his 18 points in the second half and finished with five rebounds, four assists, two steals and two blocked shots. But Pitino called Richmond “more injured than any player I’ve coached right now” before describing the brilliant, high-effort performance he turned in.
“I’m not a doctor,” Pitino said. “All I can tell you is he was really hurting and playing. Every part of his body’s hurting right now — 99% of the players wouldn’t have played today. And I don’t say that just to geek him up. They would not have played. He’s really, really hurting . . . I’m not embellishing.”
Pitino wants to see the Red Storm win that regular-season title, and the team has persevered and won with other players sidelined. But getting Richmond right for the conference tournament and the NCAA Tournament has to be a priority.
Pitino, who was asked if sitting Richmond against Butler is a possibility, promised nothing and then said, “We’re going to focus on Butler right now because Butler is a hell of an offensive basketball team . . . and we’ve got to win these games to get this Big East crown.”
Told about Hurley’s description of the Red Storm defense and rebounding as “championship-level,” Pitino explained that where a team is right now doesn’t always translate to the postseason.
“We played our best game of the season, but when you get into the Big East Tournament and you get into the NCAA Tournament, it becomes all matchups, all styles,’’ he said. “You hope for good matchups. We hope we get a great seed. We hope we finish this thing out and keep playing great basketball, but I’m a little concerned about Kadary right now.”
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
