Xavier v. St. John’s: Preview, matchup, keys to the game

You couldn’t ask for a more brutal set of back-to-back games in the Big East this year than going to UConn and then turning around and visiting St. John’s, and Xavier has pulled that particular set of matchups. The Muskies got clobbered just less than a week ago in Connecticut, seeing the game go out of reach before 10 minutes had passed and analytically final prior to the half. Now they hit the road to MSG to face a team that just beat UConn by 9 in the same venue.

The elder Pitino’s team lost to Providence on January 3rd to fall to 9-5. They haven’t lost since, ripping off 9 in a row, including battling X to the wire at Cintas a couple of weeks back. That game saw Tre Carroll drop 31 on 12-22 shooting, but a balanced St. John’s attack featuring five players in double figures enabled them to surge late and get the game across the line. That game was part of the current stretch for Xavier in which they have lost four out of five games, neatly running them towards the bottom of the league. St. John’s is moving the other direction at almost the same pace, trying to lock themselves into contention for a protected seed in the big dance. The Muskies are just trying to hold on for something resembling favorable seeding in the conference tournament. There aren’t that many ways to interpret the latest stretch as positive for Xavier, and there’s every chance it gets worse before it gets better. It has been a tough run lately for the Positive Vibes Only crowd, but there’s no better place to turn it around than the world’s most famous arena.

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Team fingerprint

Monstrous in the paint (on offense). This is a pretty okay shooting team, but where they actually shine is crushing the offensive glass and getting to the line. They’re comfortably within the top 50 in the nation in both of those categories and just outside the top 10 in OReb%; their offense is predicated on flying to the glass when the ball goes up and allowing the officials to reward them for…

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Publish date : 2026-02-09 22:26:00

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