A Change in the Garden: Rick Pitino and St. John’s now rule the Big East as UConn slides off the mountaintop

NEW YORK — A year ago, the Big East was UConn‘s league and college basketball’s mountaintop was claimed by Dan Hurley. The man was in the process of solidifying legendary credentials by guiding an all-time-great Huskies team to a sweep of Big East championships and a 37-3 record while clinching an accomplishment for eventual inclusion in the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame: back-to-back national titles.

So great were those Huskies — so relentlessly efficient was Hurley and the staff he built around him — that a UConn program that had to replace four NBA draft picks was still given more than the benefit of the doubt heading into this season (preseason ranking: No. 3). 

How good would UConn be? Could it be great again? Would Hurley’s force of will and the strength of his new additions keep Connecticut kicking, shoving and elbowing against anyone atop that craggy pinnacle of college basketball?

If you’ve followed the sport over the past three months, you know the answer. Hurley and his Huskies have been hurled from the summit. Practically every other UConn result since notoriously going 0-3 at the Maui Invitational has felt like a dramatic pendulum swing in a compelling-if-vexing denouement after the most statistically dominant two-year NCAA Tournament run in modern history. 

There are good in-league road wins against Creighton and Marquette, but there is also the horrifying Feb. 15 OT road loss against Seton Hall which, as of Sunday night, ranks 209th at KenPom and has only one other Big East scalp: lowly DePaul. Beyond that, there were the previously lauded wins that looked good in December (Baylor, Gonzaga, Texas and Xavier) but have since dropped in value; they’re all bubble teams at the moment, none better than a 9-/10-seed … which also happens to be UConn territory at the moment. 

Which brings me to what happened Sunday afternoon at Madison Square Garden. St. John’s 89, UConn 75.

How dramatically the earth can shift underneath your feet in this sport. Mountaintops morph into marshes. Year to year, rosters change, as does human behavior, which is why hope is everlasting in all sports. Teams can go from great to good — or worse — while others emerge to take over territory and become the new conquerors.

Hello, St. John’s.

On Feb. 3, 2024, UConn came into MSG, won 77-64 and had approximately half the fans in the building. Rick Pitino wasn’t happy about it.

On Sunday, the Red Storm’s crowd looked to be close to 70%. The arena was bathed in crimson lighting as the pre-game hype video got the joint jumping, with SJU fans overtaking UConn backers right before tip.

“I can assure you we had most of the fans tonight. We did not last year,” Pitino said. “But our fans were there in a big way tonight.” 

When St. John’s pulled out a come-from-behind road victory at UConn 16 days ago, it signaled a potential changing of the guard in the Big East. Sunday was the formal transition for the 10th-ranked Red Storm, who got their 24th win of the season. 

Pitino needed all of 22 months to flip a program that had floundered for most of its existence this century. (In March of 2023, Pitino was the coach at Iona, which lost to UConn in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, kicking off UConn’s run of dominance.) 

Pitino’s renaissance and his rebuild of St. John’s is one of the best stories in college basketball — and it’s picking up speed as the best month of the year awaits just around the corner.

“I thought we played our best game of the season,” Pitino said. 

What once was Connecticut’s now belongs to St. John’s. The unranked Huskies, who took their ninth loss of the season, are on a dangerous downturn that’s seen them lose three of their last five (and nearly a fourth, pulling out a come-from-behind home win earlier in the week vs. Villanova). Hurley said Sunday was their most demoralizing defeat since the peril in paradise back in November.

“We’ve got too many flaws,” Hurley admitted after the loss. “Unlike our past teams where there was literally no bad matchups for us, there are just some teams that are not great for [us].”

This is Dan Hurley. This is UConn. Too many flaws? 

But it’s true. 

The Red Storm have wrestled control of the Big East and changed the hierarchy in this conference much faster than anyone imagined. 

Consider:

• UConn’s eight-game winning streak at MSG is over
• St. John’s has won 19 straight regular-season home games for the first time since 1964-66
• UConn hasn’t defeated two consecutive top-100 KenPom teams in more than two months
• The Johnnies just swept UConn in the regular season for the first time in 25 years
• St. John’s has 15 league wins for the first time since ’84-85

A Johnnies crew that came into the game averaging 6.1 made 3-pointers had seven in the first 16 minutes. SJU wound up 8-of-19 from 3, outshooting its season-long rate by 11.9 percentage points (42.1 to 30.2). 

The 50-32 halftime margin was UConn’s largest gap since 2019. 

“Obviously for us you play against this team with that defense and that rebounding and with those type of wings and (Zuby) Ejifior and the pressure they can put on the paint, if they shoot the ball like that from the perimeter they’re going to be a problem for anyone,” Hurley said.

Hurley’s team managed to get the deficit to nine with 12:32 remaining — junior forward Alex Karaban finished with a team-high 17 points, which should be good for his confidence moving forward — but the outcome was never in doubt. 

SJU did it by way of all starters scoring at least 12 points, plus this rare feat. 

“For us this year, with our defense, we can’t take everything away,” Hurley said. 

A hobbled Kadary Richmond insisted on playing. Pitino said 99% of players would not have played in this game, but not Richmond, who’s dealing with two pulled groins. St. John’s put on the kind of performance that UConn knows all too well … because this is what the Huskies were doing to teams for the majority of 2023 and 2024.

It would have been nice to see Hurley and Pitino matching wits and battling for a close outcome in a revenge game for UConn, but that’s not where either team is right now.

This is the St. John’s team we were promised. It’s not the UConn team most were hoping for.

Pitino’s team has a road game against Butler, a home finale against Seton Hall and a road game against Marquette to close out the regular season. It’s two games up on second-place Creighton. This is going to happen: St. John’s is going to win a Big East title for the first time since 1991-92.

And barring a collapse, the Red Storm will have their first standalone Big East crown since 1984-85. That season included a run to the Final Four — the last in school history.

Sunday was the latest glaring example of how fleeting dominance can be in college athletics. UConn, with the No. 3 recruiting class arriving in 2025, may well be back among the sport’s best in short order, but it’s St. John’s time now.

This is what happens when you have coaching greats in your league. Ownership of the mountaintop is promised to no one.