Big East schedule: Takeaways for St. John's and Seton Hall

Chris Mullin and St. John's will get more opportunities to enhance home court advantage at Carnesecca Arena, with six Big East games on campus this season. (Photo by Vincent Dusovic/St. John's University Athletics)

In a year where both of the Big East schools in the New York metropolitan area have a chance to make significant noise come March, each received a favorable draw when the league's 18-game conference schedule was revealed Tuesday morning.

St. John's, thought of as a dark horse to perhaps return to the NCAA Tournament for the third time this decade, or compete in the National Invitation Tournament at the very least, was the beneficiary of a schedule that sees all but three of their Big East home games on campus at Carnesecca Arena. Across the Hudson River, Seton Hall returns a quartet of seniors and preseason Top 25-caliber outfit to South Orange, and was rewarded with a pair of home games to kick off its conference season, while also having the advantage of contesting their last two games before the Big East tournament inside the Prudential Center.

Both the Red Storm and Pirates will commence league play on December 28, with St. John's hosting Providence in Queens while Seton Hall opens with Creighton for the second consecutive year, only this time welcoming the Bluejays to Newark after visiting Omaha on the same date in 2016. The two local programs will then face one another to conclude 2017, meeting on New Year's Eve in Newark in an affair that will tip off either at noon or 5 p.m. before the calendar shifts to 2018. The return meeting between St. John's and Seton Hall takes place inside Madison Square Garden, with a noon matinee on deck in the penultimate weekend of the regular season.

The opening tip of the 2017-18 campaign is still another eight weeks away, but here are some takeaways on both sides of the Hudson as the Big East seeks to build on a banner year following seven NCAA Tournament bids, the most for the league since its restructuring in 2013:

1) More chances for St. John's to build its Carnesecca Arena home court advantage.

The six league games on the Queens campus are the most in recent memory on the corner of Union and Utopia. There actually were five Big East contests played at Carnesecca in 2015-16, but the Red Storm's home game against Marquette was initially scheduled for Madison Square Garden before being postponed due to the blizzard that wiped out not only St. John's, but also Bruce Springsteen; who was slated to perform the following night, from the World's Most Famous Arena marquee. Nonetheless, the convergence of the Garden opening its doors to the Big Ten tournament at the end of February, plus the return of the Grammy Awards to the Big Apple, provides a unique opportunity for St. John's to use their 5,602-seat bandbox as a boon to their already vast upside as the season heats up.

"I keep saying that it's waiting to blow up," head coach Chris Mullin remarked of the effect Carnesecca and its atmosphere has on a game, no more evident than in the Red Storm's dramatic upset of Butler last December. "We've got to keep that going and sell this place out every night."

Attendance on campus experienced an uptick following the hire of Steve Lavin in 2010, and has remained close to capacity in almost every game of Mullin's tenure as well. Even with three of the six league games tipping off after 8 p.m., the quality of opponents; coupled with the potential for a postseason berth, should be enough to keep fans in the stands all season long.

2) On that note, only one late game for Seton Hall is a plus for Pirate fans.

Jerry Carino, who covers Seton Hall for the Asbury Park Press, frequently notes the direct correlation between tip times and the subsequent attendance, a keen observer to the fact that New Jersey traffic is just as instrumental as the Pirates' win-loss record in determining just how many people push through the turnstiles at the Prudential Center. As he himself said when analyzing Seton Hall's slate, the schedule affords one fewer excuse for the blue-clad faithful to eschew a trip to the Rock. Of the nine home Big East games, only the titanic February 28 showdown with Villanova tips off after 7:00, with the Wildcats and Pirates taking the floor at 8:30. The March 3 regular season finale against Butler still has a time to be determined, but on the whole, Seton Hall's ledger should be conducive to a positive turnout.

3) One marquee matchup early, two more toward the end of the year.

For St. John's, their first truly big game takes place on January 9, when longtime rival Georgetown makes their way to Madison Square Garden. Although the Hoyas are projected to take a step back this season, the allure of program legend and former New York Knick Patrick Ewing taking over the reins of his alma mater promises to make the upcoming season an exciting one on the Hilltop for better or worse, and the first clash between Mullin and Ewing as opposing coaches in the third chapter of a rivalry that spanned both their collegiate playing careers and the NBA will be enough to generate a fair share of buzz. The Red Storm will get a second crack at Georgetown less than two weeks later on January 20 in the nation's capital.

Seton Hall's first major headliner occurs in the second month of the calendar year, coming on February 4 against Villanova. The noon tipoff will certainly be an appetizer for Super Bowl LII later that night, but of great interest for Pirate fans is the fact that the Wildcats will be welcoming them into the Wells Fargo Center, a change from the status quo over the past two decades. No fan base is as grateful for The Pavilion's renovations this season as Seton Hall, with the Pirates having not defeated Villanova on the road since 1994, when head coach Kevin Willard was a freshman in college. The return match with the Wildcats on February 28 in Newark sets up an intriguing finish to the season for the Pirates, with Butler; a longtime thorn in the Pirates' side since joining the Big East, coming to New Jersey immediately after Jay Wright makes his way into town.

4) All in all, both teams were taken care of on the schedule.

Willard has made no bones criticizing Seton Hall's past conference schedules, a trait attributed to his brutally honest nature and competitive spirit. This season, there is no reason for him to gripe as he heads into his eighth year in South Orange. The three-game road trips that have befallen the Pirates in prior years are nowhere to be found on this year's slate. There is a stretch of three out of four games on the road, all against the Midwest contingent of the conference (Butler, Creighton and Xavier), but with a rebuilding Georgetown at home to break up the travel, the strain becomes easier to mitigate. The same can be said of the five-out-of-seven spurt on the road to begin February, but Marquette (February 7) sandwiches journeys to Villanova and Georgetown, while DePaul (February 18) is a refreshing homecoming for the Pirates in between Xavier and Providence, with the aforementioned trek to Madison Square Garden to play St. John's serving as more of a de facto neutral site than a true road game.

On the Red Storm side, a deceptively strong opening gambit featuring Providence at home before Seton Hall and Creighton on the road may be the biggest hurdle that St. John's will have to clear. Getting a three-game homestand before facing Xavier on the road should give Mullin and his young charges mounds of confidence as they go further into January. Looking ahead, a trip to Hinkle Fieldhouse for a January 27 soiree with Butler looms as perhaps the most pivotal contest of the season for the Johnnies, with Xavier and Duke immediately on the horizon over the next seven days to follow, not to mention a February 7 trip to Philadelphia to take on Villanova.