{"id":322415,"date":"2025-10-21T23:56:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T23:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/322415\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T23:56:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T23:56:11","slug":"st-johns-uconn-rivalry-has-its-nastiness-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/322415\/","title":{"rendered":"St. John’s-UConn rivalry has its ‘nastiness’ back"},"content":{"rendered":"

The one-sided nature of the St. John\u2019s-Connecticut rivalry turned last winter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Huskies weren\u2019t at the top of the Big East. Their fans didn\u2019t take over the Garden when Dan Hurley\u2019s team took on St. John\u2019s. <\/p>\n

And, perhaps most significantly, Rick Pitino and the Johnnies won the two regular-season meetings, rallying for a thrilling win in Storrs, Conn., and manhandling the Huskies at MSG en route to the program\u2019s first outright Big East regular-season crown since 1985.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Both teams loaded up for this season, hitting the transfer portal hard. <\/p>\n

They are each viewed as Final Four contenders, adding spice to encounters on Feb. 6 and Feb. 25 that will be appointment viewing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s certainly a nastiness to when we\u2019re going to play St. John\u2019s, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s disrespectful,\u201d Connecticut coach Dan Hurley said at the Garden, as the Big East held media day less than two weeks before the start of the regular season. \u201cLike, I\u2019m not disrespectful of Coach [Rick] Pitino and who he is and what he\u2019s accomplished. But there\u2019s definitely a tenacity and tension between the programs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cJust where St. John\u2019s is at now, who becomes your rivals? People that are threatening you, the threats to what you\u2019re doing, the threats to you winning your championships become your rivals in any sport. Those are really your only rivals, the people that are threats to you being on top.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

JASON SZENES\/ NY POST<\/p>\n

UConn (No. 4) was slotted just ahead of St. John\u2019s (No. 5) in the Associated Press preseason rankings. <\/p>\n

The Johnnies edged out the Huskies in the Big East poll,<\/a> receiving seven of 11 first-place votes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The two coaches make this rivalry \u2014 the lone coaches in the league to have won national championships. They have big personalities, are intensely driven and established winners. <\/p>\n

UConn head coach Dan Hurley JASON SZENES\/ NY POST<\/p>\n

Plus, they aren\u2019t going to go out and grab a beer together anytime soon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they\u2019re both insane,\u201d new Villanova coach and former Pitino assistant Kevin Willard cracked, and he meant it in a positive way.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Pitino and Hurley didn\u2019t seem to care about where each of their teams were picked in the conference. <\/p>\n

Hurley said he let assistant coach Luke Murray fill out his ballot. Asked if he had to remind his players that being voted first doesn\u2019t mean anything, Pitino joked: \u201cI think the one thing they can attest to, when practice ends, none of them think they\u2019re No. 1.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liam McNeeley of the Connecticut Huskies fouls Zuby Ejiofor of the St. John\u2019s Red Storm during the second half of a game last season. Jason Szenes \/ New York Post<\/p>\n

Pitino doesn\u2019t subscribe to the notion that the Big East will come down to St. John\u2019s and Connecticut, talking up Creighton, Marquette, Villanova, Providence and Georgetown. <\/p>\n

Most experts, along with the Big East coaches, disagree. <\/p>\n

The Huskies and Johnnies received all 11 first-place votes, and of the 19 players selected to the three all-league teams (including the preseason player of the year honor given to Zuby Ejiofor), nine were from St. John\u2019s and Connecticut. The Huskies also had the preseason freshman of the year, guard Braylon Mullins.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great for college basketball to have rivalries, to have programs that are both legitimately top five, top 10 caliber,\u201d Hurley said. \u201cThe fact that Coach [Pitino] has their program positioned the way they played last year and the way they look in the preseason makes it exciting. It makes it great for the Big East. Those are going to be fun games.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The one-sided nature of the St. John\u2019s-Connecticut rivalry turned last winter.\u00a0 The Huskies weren\u2019t at the top of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":322416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1339,30695,2076,161195,1317,1337,1338,30692,62,1378,9767,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-322415","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-big-east","10":"tag-college-basketball","11":"tag-danny-hurley","12":"tag-ncaa","13":"tag-ncaa-basketball","14":"tag-ncaabasketball","15":"tag-rick-pitino","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-st-johns-red-storm","18":"tag-uconn-huskies","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115414865406409996","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}