UConn men set for Big East Tournament quarterfinal vs. Xavier

NEW YORK – Dan Hurley will share the sideline at Madison Square Garden with at least one Pitino during this week’s Big East Tournament.

Xavier, in its first year under Richard Pitino, son of back-to-back league champion, Rick, edged Marquette in a thrilling first round matchup on Wednesday night, 89-87. The win for the No. 10 seeded Musketeers set up Thursday’s quarterfinal, which will tip off at 7 p.m. and air on FS1.

Asked what he’ll tell his team ahead of the matchup on the Peacock broadcast, Pitino said: “Do everything the opposite of what we did the first two times we played them.”

Everything went UConn’s way in the regular season series.

The Huskies sent a message on New Year’s Eve when they went to Cincinnati and left with a 90-67 victory behind 19 points from Alex Karaban and 17 a piece from Braylon Mullins and Solo Ball. The scoreboard was even more lopsided when they met again at PeoplesBank Arena in Hartford; that one a 92-60 runaway win for UConn, which shot nearly 60% from the field and saw a combined 25 points from Eric Reibe and Jayden Ross off the bench.

But it has been a year with some surprises for the Huskies, who are coming off a loss at Marquette that cost them a share of the regular season title on Saturday.

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“We’re taking it one game at a time,” said point guard Silas Demary Jr. “You can’t look ahead or past your opponent. I think you’ve got to worry about whoever you play Thursday. Play that game and obviously we want to win and then worry about the next one.”

Xavier was led by a 21-point effort from forward Jovan Milicevic on Wednesday night. Tre Carroll, the Big East’s leading scorer at 18.0 points per game, matched his season average with 18 points, nine rebounds and four assists, and guard Malik Messina-Moore added 18 of his own as the Musketeers shot over 51% from the field.

The Huskies’ frontcourt will be light without junior wing Jaylin Stewart, who will miss the entire Big East Tournament with what was described by the team as right knee inflammation. Hurley could potentially turn to a bigger lineup as UConn looks to limit turnovers, play tough defense and hit shots coming off of its worst shooting performance since 2017.

“I feel like a lot of people have already doubted us. They threw dirt down on us, said we’re not deserving of all this. So I feel like we’re coming with a mindset where it’s like, people don’t even believe in us, but we believe in ourselves and that’s a crazy powerful, powerful gift right there,” said center Tarris Reed Jr. “Having self-confidence in ourselves and our team and what we can do this year. We were just talking the other day like, our non-con, that energy, that joy, that fire, that passion we were playing with was – you could hook me up to a lie detector test now, I was like, ‘Yo, we’re the best team in the country.’ I feel like a lot of teams go through adversity and once you really just find that passion, that drive back… I feel like it started with the loss at Marquette, learning from that, and just finding that fire back.”