St. John's vs. UConn prediction: Big East Tournament odds, best bets

St. John’s likely secured a spot in the NCAA Tournament by defeating Seton Hall, 91-72, in the Big East Tournament quarterfinals on Thursday.

The victory gave St. John’s its 20th win of the season, improving its tournament chances from 40% to 80.1% percent, per TeamRankings.

Next up for the Johnnies is a Friday afternoon conference semifinal date with the defending champion UConn Huskies, who crushed Xavier, 87-60, in their quarterfinal matchup. 

This will be the third game of the season between St. John’s and Connecticut, with the Huskies winning both contests.

However, St. John’s did manage to cover the spread in the first meeting as an 11-point underdog.

What’s interesting is that UConn does a tremendous job of taking away an opponent’s strengths.

Since we already have two games between these schools, I’ve spotted an angle on a team total that looks very promising in this tournament matchup.

The more data points I have to assess a team, the more confident I am in my numbers. Thus, I have a good understanding of this Red Storm team profile. 

St. John’s does try to play with a bit of pace, ranking 82nd (69.2 possessions per 40 minutes) in Ken Pomeroy’s adjusted tempo metric. 

The Johnnies ise their pace to try and beat its opponents down the floor as Hoop-Math.com ranks the them 67th (30%) in its percentage of initial field goal attempts in transition.

St. John’s preference for playing in transition makes sense because, surprisingly, this Rick Pitino team lacks structure in its halfcourt offense.

For example, St. John’s ranks 295th (32.5%) in percentage of 3-point shots and 261st (36.1%) in percentage of shots at the rim.

Instead, we’re seeing a lot of 2-point jump shots, which would undoubtedly make the basketball analytics community cringe. 

These 2-point jumpers account for 31.5% of St. John’s shot attempts.

That type of shot selection plays right into the hands of the Huskies, who can successfully guard the paint and the perimeter.

Connecticut doesn’t often give the opposition open looks. The Huskies rank seventh in opponent field goal percentage (49.4%) and sixth with 17.3% blocked field goal attempts at the rim.

If we move out to the perimeter, the Huskies limit opponents to 5.9 3-pointers per game, which is 28th in the country.

And although St. John’s averages 7.1 3-pointers per game, it made only four shots from beyond the perimeter in each of the two meetings with UConn.

The problem for St. John’s is that the Huskies make opponents work incredibly hard for their shots. And if the Johnnies settle for long 2-pointers, they’ll have trouble keeping pace in this game.

Connecticut has the third-best opponent effective field goal percentage at 44.8% and ranks ninth in defensive efficiency with 93.8 points allowed per 100 possessions.

Simply put, as long as the Johnnies continue to take low-percentage shots, the Huskies are likely to remain a bad matchup for them.

After looking at the box scores of the two games, the biggest thing that jumped out to me was St. John’s had only 52 field goal attempts in each game.

On average, the Johnnies attempt 64.6 field goals — the nation’s fifth-highest mark. 

Thus, in two meetings, the Huskies forced St. John’s to play a completely different style than we’ve seen all season. 

One thought is that the Johnnies struggled to impose their will on the game. Another is that they showed a great deal of respect for Connecticut’s offensive prowess and opted to slow the game down by limiting the number of possessions.

Either way, we still arrive at the same result: St. John’s will likely struggle to score points against this Connecticut defense.

As a result, if the Johnnies are going to play at a slower pace, I can only look to play them under their team total of 68.5 points.

I simply don’t see them generating enough quality shots to exceed this number against a team with such high defensive efficiency as the Huskies.

Pick: St. John’s team total under 68.5 (-115, DraftKings)