NEW YORK — In front of an exuberant sellout crowd on Friday night in Manhattan, No. 3 UConn and No. 22 St. John’s set the tone for what could be one of the best sports weekends of 2026.
A three-day run littered with top college basketball games, the start of the Winter Olympics in Italy and Super Bowl LX, which awaited Sunday in Santa Clara, was jump-started by one of the best budding rivalries in college sports.
Rick Pitino, Dan Hurley and the resurgence of Huskies vs. Johnnys.
For the first time in 26 years, St. John’s can claim a three-game winning streak over Connecticut. It came Friday night with a nonstop full-court press, an All-American performance from senior center Zuby Ejiofor and a vocal security blanket from a home crowd that was as red-dominant as any Garden game against UConn in the past decade.
“I looked around during the anthem and saw a lot of red,” Huskies coach Dan Hurley said. “That felt like a real road race.”
SJU won 81-72 and improved to 18-5 (11-1 in the Big East).
“I thought the Garden was as good as I’ve seen it,” Red Storm coach Rick Pitino said.
Two years ago, UConn fans easily outnumbered St. John’s fans in their own building. Those days are over, at least as long as Pitino walks the sidelines in an impeccably tailored suit.
“They came out and you heard it right from the anthem,” SJU head coach Steve Masiello told CBS Sports. “They were ready to go.”
This was MSG at its best, and with the press right next to the St. John’s student section, it was all too clear how important this game was to the homeschool. St. John’s opened the season as a preseason top-10 team but faltered to a 7-4 start that fell to 9-5 with a tough home loss to sub-.500 Providence in early January.
The Johnnies haven’t lost since and are now winners of nine straight games.
Pitino coached his 903rd college win, tying him (unofficially, due to vacated wins from his time at Louisville) with Roy Williams for third place in the men’s DI. Friday marked the first win for St. John’s at home against a top-three team in 15 years (No. 3 Duke in February 2011).
“This was tough, one of our toughest games,” Hurley told CBS Sports in the Huskies’ locker room afterward. “This is a very different team than the team that played in non-conference. … On the road and their style and their physicality, they have as much talent, physicality and personnel as anyone we’ve played so far in the year, with the exception of maybe Arizona, because they’ve been the clear No. 1 team.”
The result marked UConn’s first loss in 18 games (the third-longest streak in program history) and moved the 22-2 Huskies into a tie with the Red Storm in the Big East loss column.
“They’re grown men,” Hurley said.
St. John’s clawing its way to an emphatic win was a key result for the Big East, and one that’s comfortable fifth among Power Five leagues this season and is struggling through a down year. The conference is allowed to send no more than three teams to the NCAA tournament (Villanova is currently the safe third candidate). Had Connecticut won Friday, it would have been two games ahead of the league and would have been the overwhelming favorite to walk away with the conference regular-season championship.
That St. John’s prevented this was a good result for the conference. Now the race for first place can begin. Plus, the Big East needed a high-powered game like here at the Garden to remind everyone that the top of the conference is still spectacular.
Fans were on their feet throughout the arena for much of the second half as St. John’s continued to turn on the press and find separation thanks to Ejiofor’s relentless pursuit. He finished with a game-high 21 points, plus 10 rebounds, seven assists, three blocks and two steals.
“Tough for a two-day turnaround,” Hurley told me about preparing for that press. “They just break your balls to get the ball in.”
It’s not that UConn played poorly; the Huskies became the rare top-five team to lose despite shooting (at least) 55% overall and almost 50% from 3 (9 for 19). Ironically, Hurley’s most valuable player was also his least reliable. Point guard Silas Demary Jr. delivered one of the best dunks of the season as part of his team-high performance of 18 points with seven rebounds and five assists.
But he also had a whopping nine turnovers; UConn finished with 15, which St. John’s turned into 20 points.
“It was a great adventure,” Hurley deadpanned afterward. “It was a rollercoaster ride.”
This was the ninth time UConn and St. John’s have met when both were ranked. St. John’s now has a 5-4 lead. It was only the third time the two met under the Garden Lights, when both had a number next to their names in the regular season. (Previous years: 1999 and 1991.)
And incredibly, Friday marked only the second time in Big East history that the conference had a game in February where each team had one or fewer losses in league play. (The other in 2009 when UConn pitino coach defeated Louisville 68-51.)
Ejiofor can do so much to carry this team, but he didn’t have to be a solo act on Friday night. Dillon Mitchell’s versatile role as a point forward played a big role (he finished with 15 points and six rebounds, including a late tip-back layup that ended UConn’s chances of rallying), as did backup point guard Dylan Darling, whose second-half defense gave St. John’s a shock that led to a 55-45 lead after the teams were tied at 39 points at halftime.
St. John’s showed no effects from the twelve-hour delay earlier in the week, when travel was halted and the team had to stay an extra night in Chicago after beating DePaul. That led to what Masiello told me: “a glorified Wednesday night walk” to prepare for Connecticut.
“Coach Pitino was as good as I’ve seen him build a team for this game,” Masiello said. “He made sure we knew how Good UConn was. He made sure we knew that, and we watched several games to understand that, which is normal for us, but today it was all about building these guys up, confidence and having great belief, and the guys just fed off of it.”
It’s no surprise that Pitino has found a way to coach around the fact that he doesn’t have an ideal and proven point guard to play more than 30 minutes a night. Darling is a guy with a great chance of pace off the bench, but Dillon Mitchell (who plays the 3 or the 4) is as good a point guard as anyone on the team. The evolution has been interesting, and now it looks like the Johnnies will feature in March for the second season in a row.
This comes after the group looked like one of the sport’s biggest disappointments around Christmas.
“Outside [speculation]“I understand,” Masiello said. ‘Inside, no. … We didn’t close the games early in the year. And sometimes, when you have four new starters… that will happen. But I don’t think there’s ever been any question about what our ceiling could be. I know no one doubted this. I understand the outsiders. I get it. Lots of noise, it’s New York, lots of expectations early. I think maybe it was like, you gotta go through some stuff to get where you need to be.”
Over the past month, St. John’s has been what was expected in the fall: a top-10 team.
It just took the first boxing match against one of the best teams in the country. Will the taste of blood in his mouth motivate UConn to avoid that feeling again for the remainder of the Big East schedule?
“I don’t know,” Hurley told me in the locker room afterward. “You can’t be sure because we haven’t lost for a while, but I can imagine that a team of our quality will respond.”
We’ll get part 2 in Hartford on February 25th. If both teams continue as they have been going, they will enter the match with a combined 48-7 and will almost certainly both be in the top 10. The regular season title could very well be decided that night.
Even in a bad year for such a proud conference, at least the top two coaches and key teams come along to keep the stakes high and the basketball as good as you’ll find anywhere else in the sport.
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