UConn men’s basketball (27-4, 17-3) begins its 2026 postseason on Thursday night, as the Huskies make the short trip down to New York City for the Big East Tournament to take on Xavier (15-17, 6-14) at Madison Square Garden in the quarterfinal round.
The 10-seed Musketeers rank No. 95 in KenPom, with the No. 70 offense in the country, and 97th in the NET. Xavier picked up a nail-biting 89-87 win over Marquette in the first round on Wednesday, energized by three players with 18+ points led by Jovan
Milicevic and his 21. The Musketeers shot 52% from the field and avoided a late surge from Big East Freshman of the Year Nigel James Jr. to hold on and advance after dropping five of their last six.
As for UConn, the Huskies sit at No. 6 in the AP Poll, No. 10 in KenPom, and No. 9 in the NET. They are fresh off of a surprising loss to Marquette in their regular season finale, which cost them a share of the Big East regular season title. UConn shot just 3-24 from three in the loss, playing uncharacteristic basketball against a team that finished eight games under .500.
After picking up such a shocking loss, UConn fell off of the one line on most bracketology’s, getting leaped by Florida. At this stage in the year, the Huskies would likely need a combination of a Big East Tournament title and a somewhat early SEC Tourney exit from the Gators to have a chance to be a 1-seed, amongst other things in other conference tournaments.
The Huskies have won in the quarterfinals of the Big East Tournament every year since rejoining the Big East, making at least the semifinals in five-straight years. Can UConn keep its perfect new Big East quarters win streak alive?
Date/Time: Thursday, March 12, 7:00 p.m.
TV/Stream: FS1, FoxSports.com
Radio: UConn Sports Network, Sirius XM 204, Sirius/XM online streaming
Odds: UConn -14.5 points, O/U 152.5 points
Location: Madison Square Garden — New York, New York
KenPom Predicted Score: UConn 83, Xavier 69 — 90% win probability
Series History
The Huskies and Musketeers have played 14 times in their history, with the past 12 coming in Big East play. UConn has a 9-5 advantage over Xavier with an 8-4 split in conference action. They last faced off on Feb. 3, 2026 when UConn beat Xavier 92-60 at PeoplesBank Arena. Silas Demary Jr. led five double-figure scorers with 17 points.
In terms of Big East Tournament history, UConn and Xavier have faced off once at the World’s Most Famous Arena. In 2024, the Huskies knocked off the Musketeers 87-60 in the quarterfinals on the way to their Big East Tournament title. Tristen Newton and Donovan Clingan each had 13 points to lead six in double figures.
Availability report
Jaylin Stewart will miss the Big East Tournament with right knee inflammation.
What to Watch For
One sided show
UConn handled both regular season matchups against Xavier with ease this year, winning the two games by an average of 29.5 points per game. On New Year’s Eve, the team led wire to wire in a 27 point win in Cincinnati that saw Braylon Mullins knock down five threes. In early February, UConn had the first of two 32-point wins in Hartford over Pitinos that month, blowing out the Musketeers with five players scoring in double figures.
“UConn, although they lost their last one, is the class of this league and a championship program. They’re what we’re striving to be,” Xavier head coach Richard Pitino said after the win Wednesday.
The Musketeers certainly showed some grit during their first round win on Wednesday that they didn’t show much of in either clash with the Huskies.
It’s winning time
From here on out, every game that the Huskies play will be an elimination game. Drop a game at MSG this week? All eyes on Selection Sunday. Lose in the NCAA Tournament? We’ll see you in November. Every play and every possession is so critical because in March, one play or possession could be the difference.
Dan Hurley is no stranger to this type of pressure on his team. In the past three years during these “elimination” games, UConn is 18-3 and only lost by a total of 13 points in the three defeats to Marquette in 2023, Creighton in 2025 & Florida in 2025.
After how the regular season ended, you can bet that Hurley and the staff are overprepared for the next few days in Manhattan, as well as the weeks to follow in the national tournament. With guys like Alex Karaban, Solo Ball & Jayden Ross having seen two of the extremes of college basketball in March, winning a title and getting knocked out in the first weekend, the sense of urgency Thursday and beyond will certainly be present. If UConn advances, the Huskies will take on the winner of 11-seed Georgetown and 3-seed Villanova on either FOX or FS1.
No Stew York City this year
As mentioned previously and announced on Tuesday, Jaylin Stewart will be out the entirety of the Big East Tournament dealing with a nagging knee injury. The junior last played in UConn’s win over Villanova back on Feb. 21 and was expected to play this past Saturday against Marquette before not even ending up making the trip.
“We thought Jaylin would be available for that game,” Hurley said after the loss to the Golden Eagles in terms of the team’s preparation, “so it gives us a little more time to work on a couple of different lineups.”
One thing that Hurley hinted at was potentially seeing a double big lineup with both Tarris Reed Jr. and Eric Reibe on the floor together, something that we’ve only seen sparingly this year. I’d expect a healthy dose of Ross too, as we’ve seen the past few weeks. Ross has played 17 minutes or more in each of UConn’s past five games.
It would have been nice to see Stewart play this week, seeing how he’s dialed up his game in the BET in the past. As a freshman, he averaged 8.5 points in the semifinals and final off the bench to provide a huge offensive spark, his second and third highest scoring games of his rookie year.
Musketeer mismatches
Xavier starts three legit frontcourt players in Tre Carroll, Filip Borovicanin and Jovan Milicevic. UConn, of course, starts three guards in Silas Demary Jr, Ball and Braylon Mullins. Somewhere, someone is going to have a challenging defensive matchup, and it goes both ways. Whichever Husky guard is guarding a Musketeer big is going to have some trouble, and vice versa.
This would be where having Stewart could offset some of the minutes and allow UConn to play a bit bigger. Ross will spend a lot of his time in the game guarding Carroll, which could be the difference and has been all year seeing that UConn has handled Carroll well all year long.
In games that he didn’t depart with injury, Carroll has scored in double figures in all but three games this season. Two of those games were against, you guessed it, UConn. The Huskies have had his number, limiting him to nine points in each outing and an average of 35% from the field.
Like the blowout philosophy, it would be surprising to see a third-straight game in which the Huskies limit Carroll to single digits. Certainly never say never, but Pitino is bringing a different mindset into Thursday’s matchup after learning things from the two losses.
“We’re going to do the total opposite of what we did the first two times in everything that we do,” Pitino said in jest.
While he had a joking tone and generated some laughs, I’d imagine there won’t be much sleep from the Musketeer coaching staff to ensure that they play, at the very least, a competitive game.
Familiar Stomping Grounds
Thursday will be UConn’s fourth game at MSG in 2025-26, the most of any Big East team not named St. John’s this season. Despite this, a couple Huskies have struggled to find their footing inside the Mecca.
BMullins has a weird relationship with the Garden. His first career game was their, in which he was on a minutes restriction and only scored two points in 10 minutes. His second contest came a couple weeks later in the Jimmy V Classic against Florida, a game in which he scored six points in only 11 minutes, fouling out for the first of just two times in his career. Then there’s the game against St. John’s, in which he suffered the first loss in a game he played in in his college career.
Silas Demary Jr. has had his ups and downs too. In three games at MSG this year, he has just nine assists to 13 turnovers, including his infamous nine TOs against St. John’s. He is right at his average when it comes to scoring, 11 PPG, but his playmaking and ball control have taken steps down in the small sample size.
The Huskies have certainly had some highlights as well, though. Malachi Smith’s 14 points and nine asissts against Illinois come to mind, particularly his ridiculously deep three he hit late in the game. Smith also had nine dimes against Florida. Karaban averaged a solid 16 PPG and had some big shots as well.
Overall, UConn has won 11 of its past 14 at MSG, for the most part living up to “Storrs South.”
