UConn HC Braces for St. John’s Crowd Surge
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The UConn Huskies enter the Big East Tournament final coming off one of their most complete performances. In their last game, the Huskies took down Georgetown in a 67–51 semifinal win at Madison Square Garden.
The Huskies had a 7–0 start, building a double-digit halftime lead and stretching the margin to as many as 19 in the second half. By the end, the Huskies had held Georgetown without a field goal for more than six minutes. Next up, the Huskies and Dan Hurley face a familiar foe.
The Huskies face St. John’s for the Big East Tournament finals. UConn enters 29-4, while St. John’s arrives at 27-6. The teams split their regular-season meetings, with the Red Storm handing UConn an 81–72 loss at Madison Square Garden before the Huskies responded weeks later with a stunning 72–40 rout in Connecticut.
That split makes this rubber match more intriguing. Soon after the Georgetown game, Hurley went on to talk about facing the Red Storm in an interview with John Fanta on the "BIG EAST Postgame Walk-and-Talk".
“Oh, it’ll be awesome. I think it’s like, you know, you’ve got to give the people what they want,” Hurley said. “Especially as an appetizer before March Madness, before Selection Sunday, to be able to give college basketball, to deliver for the Big East, in a year where we’re not going to get that many teams in the NCAA Tournament. But to have two programs that can make a run this month in that tournament fight it out for the confetti and the net cutting tomorrow is going to be as good a final as there’s been in a while here.”
The stage is set 🏟️ pic.twitter.com/W7PV6RMAut
— UConn Men's Basketball (@UConnMBB) March 14, 2026
It is particularly interesting because of the MSG factor. The early-season defeat the Huskies faced happened at the same venue, and one reason was the St. John’s crowd. When the Johnnies snapped UConn’s 18-game winning streak there in February, the Garden leaned heavily red, creating an atmosphere that felt anything but neutral.
And the Garden crowd could once again become a storyline. Forseeing the same, Hurley went on to warn, “Yeah, I mean, they’ve got to, I don’t know, get in the secondary ticket market or whatever. You better be scalping outside. You can’t make us play in an 80–20 building tomorrow. This is not an ad. You cannot make us play in an 80–20 building tomorrow. That’s not this. We need this to feel like a neutral site.”
Dan Hurley Reveals What the Huskies Have to Fix to Win the Big East Tournament
Big games often come down to small details, and if the Huskies can keep up their defense, the title might be theirs. However, the defense, rebounding, and turnover troubles would have to be under control to take down a physical St. John’s team that thrives in the paint.
As Hurley sees it, “Yeah, we’ve got to take care of the ball. We obviously have to defend the paint. We’ve got to be able to rebound the ball because they assault you. They’ve got grown men that make it really, really tough on you. So you’ve got to be able to protect the paint, rebound the ball, not turn the ball over, and keep them off the foul line. They live at the foul line.”
-fd44250df32912986cc6690f0b8bfa32.png "Shivani Menon")
Shivani Menon is a sports journalist with a background in Mass Communication and a passion for storytelling. She has written for EssentiallySports, College Sports Network, and PFSN, covering Olympic sports like track and field, gymnastics, and alpine skiing, as well as college football, basketball, March Madness, and the NBL Draft. When she's not reporting, she's either on the road chasing sunsets or getting lost in the rhythms of electronic soundscapes.