For the second week in a row, the best college basketball matchup of the weekend takes place on Friday night.
Last week it was Michigan building a big lead, falling behind, then ultimately rallying to pull away for a big road win at Michigan State.
This week, two of the biggest coaching personalities in the sport renew acquaintances, as Dan Hurley leads UConn into Madison Square Garden to take on Rick Pitino and St. John’s.
UConn is looking for a measure of revenge after last year, when the then back-to-back national champions lost both head-to-head meetings with the eventual Big East regular-season and conference tournament champions, St. John’s.
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UConn enters this game as a slight 1.5-point road favorite, with the total of 144.5. And I like UConn to get the win over the Red Storm on Friday night.
While both teams have dominated in Big East play, it’s what happened before conference play that makes me give the nod to the visitors in this one. UConn played an extremely challenging out-of-conference schedule and collected impressive wins against BYU, Florida, Illinois and at Kansas.
At 22-1, UConn’s only loss this season was to undefeated Arizona and that was a game where UConn was shorthanded, missing two key starters. Meanwhile, the Red Storm also played some good teams prior to Big East play, but the results were not pretty. They faced four tournament-caliber teams before the calendar flipped to the new year, losing to all of them (Alabama, Auburn, Iowa State, and Kentucky).
St. John’s has won nine straight games since a shocking loss to Providence on Jan. 3, but UConn has already beaten two high-profile teams at Madison Square Garden this season (Illinois and Florida).
Even though this is a road game, the Huskies will have plenty of support from their rabid, well-traveling fan base that will make the short trip to see this Big East showdown.
PICK: UConn (-1.5) to win by more than 1.5 points
