St. John’s got nearly everything it had hoped for when the Big East released the conference schedule for the 2025-26 season on Thursday afternoon.
Coach Rick Pitino and the school administration had pushed to possibly play all 10 Big East home games at Madison Square Garden. They got nine.
They’d hoped for the massive spotlight of a Friday night game for the contests with Connecticut, and it has one at the Garden on Feb. 6.
And Red Storm fans will not be spending New Year’s Eve in Omaha again. The annual Dec. 31 game this season will be on the road against Georgetown in Washington, D.C.
The defending Big East regular-season and conference champion, St. John’s will play 12 regular-season games at the Garden (plus an exhibition game), matching the 1951-52 team for most games played there.The nine Big East games at MSG is a record for the Red Storm.
The Storm already was playing a very ambitious non-conference schedule with Garden games against Alabama (Nov. 8) and Ole Miss (Dec. 6), Players Era Tournament games against Iowa State, Baylor and a third opponent to be determined (Nov. 24-26) and a high-profile Dec. 20 matchup with Kentucky at the CBS Sports Classic in Atlanta.
The conference schedule has a couple measuring-stick stretches – one in mid-January and another in late February. The latter will include a Wednesday night game against UConn at PeoplesBank Arena in Hartford rather than the Huskies’ on-campus arena Gampel Pavilion.
St. John’s finishes the regular season with three of what figure to be less challenging games: Villanova at the Garden (Feb. 28), Georgetown at the Garden (March 3) and on the road at Seton Hall, March 6.
Start times for the Big East games have not been announced.
St. John’s will play two exhibition games before the Nov. 3 season opener against Quinnipiac. It hosts Towson at Carnesecca Arena on Oct. 18 at 2 p.m. and meets Michigan at the Garden at 7 p.m. on Oct. 25.
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.