The regular season for Big East women’s basketball wraps up on Sunday. Everyone except for Villanova and St. John’s have two games left to go this week, as the Wildcats and the Red Storm get the last two byes in the round robin format schedule. By my math, the following seeds in the conference tournament have been clinched:
1 — UConn
2 — Villanova
and that’s it. We are down to just six teams jostling for the top five spots in the league, though. Fifth place Marquette has a three game lead on seventh
place Providence, so the only team that could squeeze the Golden Eagles out of a bye to the quarterfinals right now is sixth place Creighton.
Meanwhile, on the men’s side, we’re a long way from settling anything with everyone having either three or four games left to go. With that said, we’re going to get a lot of clarity on exactly what’s going on with the regular season championship by the time we get to sunrise on Sunday morning, so that’s exciting.
Let’s get into the highlights of the week, shall we?
Wednesday, February 25: #15 St. John’s Red Storm at #6 Connecticut Huskies (6pm Central, Peacock) — Rick Pitino has the Johnnies in first place in the Big East by half a game over UConn going into the week. The Red Storm won the meeting at the Garden on February 6th, and that put them in the driver’s seat for a second straight regular season title. Winning here would all but make that official, while a Huskies win would crack the door open for them to at worst share the title. Game of the Week in the league, without a doubt.
Thursday, February 26: RV Villanova Wildcats at Seton Hall Pirates (6pm Central, Peacock) — This is Villanova’s only game of the week, and it’s going to have an impact on the seeding for the conference tournament even though the Wildcats are set in place. A Pirates win will lock them in as the #3 seed, while a Wildcats win will create a possibility for a messy tie situation, but only if Seton Hall also loses at Butler in the regular season finale on Sunday.
Saturday, February 28: Seton Hall Pirates at #6 Connecticut Huskies (11am Central, FS1) — Eating a season sweep at the hands of DePaul has left Budd Clark and the Pirates in the situation where they can not lose again if they want to even think about an NCAA tournament bid. That’s both because they can’t take more losses at 19-9 overall and 9-8 in the Big East…. but also because they get UConn and St. John’s in their last three. Those are very big ways to make yourself known to the selection committee, but if you’re the kind of team that gets swept by DePaul….. can you pull the upset here?
Saturday, February 28: RV Villanova Wildcats at #15 St. John’s Red Storm (7pm Central, Fox) — Villanova isn’t mathematically eliminated from the regular season title conversation quite yet at 12-4 in the conference standings. Their path requires them to win out and both St. John’s and UConn to lose out with the exception of their head-to-head game on Wednesday. This would obviously be a way to accomplish both at the same time.
Sunday, March 1: #1 Connecticut Huskies at St. John’s Red Storm (6:30pm Central, TNT/truTV) — First, this game is at Madison Square Garden, which is really cool….. but is also going to lead to there being 80% UConn fans in the building at absolute worst. Second, this is the last remaining game of the regular season for St. John’s. Essentially, as long as Seton Hall and Marquette mind their business in their two games, they should be able to rely on Sarah Strong to punt the Johnnies to a ninth league loss and keep the Pirates and the Golden Eagles in the top five of the conference standings. If Creighton squares their business this week, that means the Bluejays might slide into the top five by way of a tiebreaker, because they have a season sweep of the Red Storm.
Here’s the full Big East men’s basketball schedule for the week, with all times Central, as always.
Here’s the full Big East women’s basketball schedule for the week, with all times Central, as always.
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