NEW YORK — A year ago, the Big East was UConn’s league and college basketball’s mountaintop was claimed by Dan Hurley. The man was in the process of solidifying legendary credentials by guiding an all-time-great Huskies team to a sweep of Big East championships and a 37-3 record while clinching an accomplishment for eventual inclusion in the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame: back-to-back national titles.
So great were those Huskies — so relentlessly efficient was Hurley and the staff he built around him — that a UConn program that had to replace four NBA draft picks was still given more than the benefit of the doubt heading into this season (preseason ranking: No. 3).
How good would UConn be? Could it be great again? Would Hurley’s force of will and the strength of his new additions keep Connecticut kicking, shoving and elbowing against anyone atop that craggy pinnacle of college basketball?
If you’ve followed the sport over the past three months, you know the answer. Hurley and his Huskies have been hurled from the summit. Practically every other UConn result since notoriously going 0-3 at the Maui Invitational has felt like a dramatic pendulum swing in a compelling-if-vexing denouement after the most statistically dominant two-year NCAA Tournament run in modern history.
There are good in-league road wins against Creighton and Marquette, but there is also the horrifying Feb. 15 OT road loss against Seton Hall which, as of Sunday night, ranks 209th at KenPom and has only one other Big East scalp: lowly DePaul. Beyond that, there were the previously lauded wins that looked good in December (Baylor, Gonzaga, Texas and Xavier) but have since dropped in value; they’re all bubble teams at the moment, none better than a 9-/10-seed … which also happens to be UConn territory at the moment.
Which brings me to what happened Sunday afternoon at Madison Square Garden. St. John’s 89, UConn…
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