The chant is like the chalkboard claws of St. John's and his fans, especially when it's happening within Madison Square Garden.
“UCONN, UCONN, UCONN, UCONN” is a nightmare fuel for Johnny, bringing back painful memories from Connecticut fans in his victory over Johnny in the arena last season.
On Sunday afternoons, St. John's and its hungry fanbase can calm those upsetting suffering with sold-out MSG.
“For the majority of the season, it's always been like a red sea, Johnny's fans pack MSG. It's what we need and it's what we thrive.” “Give it.” The energy and support they show us on the night we expect to come to UConn.”
For the first time since Husky rejoined the Big East five years ago, 10th-ranked Johnny was able to wipe out consecutive dominant national champions and officially end his second straight regular season conference crown pursuit Masu.
In doing so, Redstorm will take him a step closer to school's first full season league title since the 1984-85 campaign.
St. John's will enter 16 Marquettes in 4 games on Sunday's showdown with Clayton's loss column and Connecticut's three games.
The chances of victory over the Husky and the Red Storm catcher are greatly reduced.
“There's such a big stage, this big arena, this big game,” said sophomore guard Simeon Wilcher. “It's really hard to put into words how excited I am, especially just because of the environment.”
There is no doubt that the building will have UConn fans, but Red Storm is expected to have an important advantage.
St. John fans appeared during this breakout season, selling, for example, a victory at Clayton last Sunday.
On seven garden dates this season, Johnny averaged 16,188 attendees, an impressive figure in a professional town.
New York City wrapped his arms around this rough team, but has not been lost in full force since the big ve day.
“They'll introduce me,” director Rick Pipino said of St. John fans. “So we already sell 16,000 seats for Seton Hall, so they show up. But Connecticut is Kentucky in the East. They have a great journey and show up everywhere.”
There was uncertainty whether St. John's was a whole over Connecticut. Key scorer RJ Lewis handled the pulled gro caliber and missed Wednesday's victory over DePaul.
Check out the latest Big East rankings and cents. John's statistics
However, Lewis tends to practice on Saturday and become available. That's good news for St. John's (23-4, 14-2). This has been a month without a healthy Davon Smith. This was the lead guard who looked like his ju umpire self against DePaul, losing only once at Villanova. Within that range.
With or without Lewis, St. John's has a lot of confidence to beat Connecticut.
He already put the Huskies on top in Storps, Connecticut on February 7th, but did so despite the fact that Pitino felt it was a performance full of mistakes.
St. John's headed UConn with a 14-point lead and then came behind a dominant defensive effort with the Husky scoring 32 points in the final 31:38.
That victory came at the beginning of a difficult six-game stretch that was the litmus test for St. John's.
This included Upper Echelon's meeting with Big East Fors Villanova, Marquette and Clayton, as well as two matchups with Connecticut.
So far, Johnny is 4-1.
The expected gauntlet approaches Sunday and offers the Red Storm the opportunity to place an exclamation point at its end.
“We know exactly what's going on [stake]Egiofort said. “We had to get it done, whatever it was.”
