The Big Picture: Why UConn’s Big East Schedule Is High Risk, Low Reward

HARTFORD, Conn. — Three hours southwest of here, at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, the UConn basketball team will have an unusual opportunity Tuesday night, at least within the parameters of this particular season: a top-25 matchup against a conference opponent. The third-ranked Huskies, winners of 12 consecutive games, are set to face No. 25 Seton Hall in a battle between two of the Big East’s hottest programs. First and second in the league standings, respectively. 

But before head coach Dan Hurley & Co. could officially turn their attention to the Pirates, whose résumé was boosted by a come-from-behind victory over Creighton earlier this month, the Huskies grinded through a home game with DePaul at PeoplesBank Arena on Saturday afternoon. The Blue Demons have improved significantly under second-year head coach Chris Holtmann, playing with the relentless physicality that is now a prerequisite in the Big East, but they’re still treading water in the league’s hierarchy and sit outside the top 100 on three leading analytics websites: KenPom (111), EvanMiya.com (109) and T-Rank (117). 

In other words, UConn was expected to win this game with relative ease after being favored by more than 19 points, and it won’t be rewarded much for actually accomplishing that feat. But a loss? That would have been analytically catastrophic for a team chasing a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament and its third national title in the last four years. 

“It’s something that you don’t have to deal with in the Big 12, you don’t have to deal with in the SEC,” Hurley told me. “If you win the game, you can improve your position. If you lose a game, you really don’t get hurt. We don’t have that luxury.”

A labored first half against DePaul gave way to an eventual 23-point lead in the waning minutes, though UConn’s margin of victory was only 72-60, thanks to a rough finishing sequence from the backups — a level of play Hurley described as “bulls—” in his post-game news conference. 

This, though, is life in the Big East amid a campaign in which programs like St. John’s and Creighton have already combined to lose 12 games, and Marquette, which averaged 26.3 wins per season over the last three years, is currently 6-11 overall and 1-5 in conference play, dead last in the league standings. There are only three Big East teams ranked better than 40th nationally on the major analytics platforms entering Tuesday’s batch of games and only two teams in the latest AP Poll released earlier this week: UConn, which has been there all season; and Seton Hall, which just entered the rankings for the first time. Villanova and St. John’s received votes.

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“It’s not ideal,” Hurley told me. “I mean, it’s unfortunate, because the [Big East] games are still going to be hard because you’re playing every two or three days, people know you so well, the way the games are officiated is pretty physical. It sucks.”

Both recent and longtime observers of the Big East will know that this current stretch of early season mediocrity is unusual for a league that has produced 10 national champions since 1999, even as the conference’s size and constituency evolved through realignment. Beginning with UConn’s first national title in 1999, what followed was a 28-year period in which an average of 8.6 Big East teams per season finished among the top 75 in final KenPom rankings, according to the site’s historical data. That includes an average of 4.1 Big East teams per year that were ranked among the top 30 and two teams per year ranked among the top 15. 

Thus far, all of those numbers have worsened near the midway point of the 2025-26 season, with seven Big East teams currently in the top 75, three in the top 30 and only one — UConn — in the top 15. This is also the first time since 2021 and just the third time since 2014 that the Big East is trending toward finishing fifth or worse in KenPom’s conference rankings for a given year. The league is currently trailing the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC in the overall pyramid, bringing up the rear among power conferences. A supremely difficult non-conference schedule that included wins over then-No. 7 BYU, then-No. 13 Illinois, then-No. 21 Kansas and then-No. 18 Florida is now the backbone of UConn’s postseason profile.  

The Huskies’ recent thriller against unranked Providence on Jan. 7 became a prime example of the league-wide challenges to which Hurley was referring. UConn traveled to Amica Mutual Pavilion as a 9.5-point favorite over a group of Friars that, at the time, were 8-6 overall with four losses to teams outside the top 40 in KenPom. Nonetheless, head coach Kim English and his team blitzed the Huskies early and were still clinging to an 11-point lead with approximately three minutes remaining. It required a mad-dash, last-ditch shooting barrage from true freshman guard Braylon Mullins for UConn to force overtime and ultimately escape with a 103-98 victory, staving off what would have been a costly analytical defeat emblematic of the season as a whole.

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“We knew it was going to be tough regardless,” power forward Alex Karaban said in a news conference after beating Providence. “Throughout my experience in Big East play, every Big East game is a battle. And this was definitely the biggest battle of them all that I’ve been through. It took everybody on our team. I’m glad we found a way just to get that extra win in the Big East and push that we want to get toward the regular season goals that we have.”

The Huskies’ next opponent, Seton Hall, presents a fascinating challenge both in terms of the metrics and UConn’s recent struggles at the Prudential Center, where the Huskies have lost three in a row. Led by fifth-year head coach Shaheen Holloway, who guided his alma mater to an NIT championship two seasons ago, the Pirates have grinded to a 14-2 overall record and 4-1 mark in the Big East that represents their best start to a campaign since 2017-18. They’ve leaned on their defense, which ranks ninth nationally in efficiency, to limit opponents to just 62.7 points per game, best in the conference and seventh in Division I this season. Marquette is the only team to score more than 70 points against Seton Hall since Nov. 25, and the Golden Eagles did so in a losing effort. 

But the Pirates are alarmingly imbalanced, with an offense that ranks 133rd nationally and eighth in the Big East. They’re 218th in 3-point shooting at 33% and have eclipsed 80 points just once since the end of November. They also played a relatively weak non-conference schedule that included a single victory over teams currently ranked among the top 75 on KenPom. Taken together, those data points mean that even though Seton Hall snuck into this week’s AP Poll for the first time since Jan. 10, 2022, the analytics websites don’t love their profile: 40th overall on T-Rank, 43rd on KenPom and 44th on EvanMiya.com. 

That makes this week’s matchup with UConn another high-risk, low-reward scenario for the Huskies. Which begs the question: Can this year’s underperforming Big East still adequately prepare Hurley’s team for the NCAA tournament?

“I think so,” Hurley told me. “I think the way that Seton Hall has played, I think the way that Villanova has played, I think the way that Creighton has played now in the Big East, obviously St. John’s, I think, they’re still really, really talented. Butler was good enough to beat Virginia in the non-conference. Yeah, I think there’s enough there.”

The verdict won’t be rendered until March. 

Michael Cohen covers college football and college basketball for FOX Sports. Follow him at @Michael_Cohen13.

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