UConn spent the last month of the season in contention for a No. 1 seed in March Madness while St. John’s lost only once after early January.
The reward for those Big East powers? Being jammed into the same East Region bracket, along with Duke as the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Dan Hurley’s Huskies are the No. 2 seed in the East on the opposite side of the bracket from the Blue Devils, while Hall of Famer Rick Pitino’s Red Storm claimed the 5-seed. That set up St. John’s with a cross-country trip to open the tournament in San Diego, which could include a second-round date with a blueblood program (Kansas) in Duke’s half of the draw.
The first game comes Friday against 12th-seeded Northern Iowa.
“I’ve been to Portland and Arizona and went to a Final Four,” Pitino told reporters Sunday night in New York. “It’s not ideal traveling to the West Coast, but you deal with it and you just make the best of it.”
St. John’s (28-6) took two of three meetings this season against UConn (29-5), the second being a 20-point win in Saturday’s Big East Tournament championship game. The Feb. 25 blowout loss at UConn stands as St. John’s lone setback since standing at 9-5 as of Jan. 3, with the Red Storm winning 19 of 20.
The only other Big East team to make the field was Villanova, an 8-seed in the West Region. So the league’s two best hopes of reaching the Final Four are battling for the same ticket to Indianapolis, part of a rugged bracket that includes the 32-win Blue Devils as well as Hall of Fame coaches like Tom Izzo at Michigan State and Bill Self at Kansas.
Selection committee chairman Keith Gill, the Sun Belt commissioner, said the Red Storm’s nonconference wins lacked “the same depth and quality” of teams seeded ahead of them. St. John’s was just 5-5 in Quadrant 1 games that top a postseason résumé; it lost to Iowa State, Alabama, Kentucky and Auburn in its top nonconference games.
“They played well,” Gill said of St. John’s winning the Big East. “And certainly that’s a big win over UConn. But it really is a full body of work.”
The Huskies have nonconference wins against defending national champion and No. 1 seed Florida, Illinois, Kansas and BYU. They were flirting with a top regional seed in the committee’s preliminary rankings in February and appeared within reach of one entering the final week before Selection Sunday.
“The fact that we earned such a high seed speaks to the overall season that we had,” Hurley said. “We had a great season. It is the time of the year when you have to turn all of your experience, the confidence from the success, the resolve and the resilience from the struggles to get out on the court and try to play your best ball.”
UConn started 22-1 but has gone 7-4 since. The Huskies open play Friday against 15-seed Furman in Philadelphia.
“We are confident about the ability to get outside of this league, which is a real brutal, physical, rock fight and a little more basketball, more movement (in the NCAAs), less grabbing, less holding, less mauling and less fouling,” Hurley said.
___
AP freelance writer Jim Fuller in Connecticut contributed to this report.
___
AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness
