No. 3 UConn men’s basketball looks to keep rolling as it hosts Xavier Tuesday: What to know

The UConn men’s basketball team must first get through Richard Pitino and his Xavier team in Hartford on Tuesday before its much-anticipated Madison Square Garden matchup against his Hall of Fame father, Rick, and No. 22 St. John’s Friday night.

Coming off of their most complete performance of the season in Saturday’s 27-point win at Creighton, their 17th in a row, the Huskies welcome a Xavier team that was on the other end of one of its best starts to a game in the early part of the Big East schedule. UConn led by as many as 25 points in the first 10 minutes when it visited the Cintas Center on New Year’s Eve and was able to maintain the gap for a wire-to-wire, 23-point victory.

It has been tough sledding for the Musketeers – 12-10 overall and 4-7 in the Big East – in the first year under Pitino, which was to be expected.

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The roster was gutted after Sean Miller left for Texas, leaving only one scholarship player in 6-foot-3 guard Roddie Anderson III, who decided to redshirt last season after he came over from Boise State. Pitino brought over two players from his previous stop at New Mexico in 6-10 sophomore Jovan Milicevic, who is second on the team in scoring (11.6 points per game) and shooting 41.7% on 103 3-point attempts, and senior forward Filip Borovicanin, who’s had several double-doubles and flirted with some triple-doubles throughout league play.

The Musketeers ended a three-game losing streak on Saturday after Borovicanin drilled a turnaround jumper at the buzzer for a 68-66 win over DePaul.

Borovicanin had 14 points, 11 rebounds and six assists in the first matchup against the Huskies, leading his team in every category except points (Montana transfer Malik Messina-Moore scored 16 and Anderson had 15). But UConn was able to keep Milicevic in check with just two points on three shots, and limited leading scorer Tre Carroll, a 6-8 senior from FAU, to nine points on 3-for-11 from the field.

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For the Huskies, a win on Tuesday would make them 12-0 in the Big East, which would be the best start for any team in the league since the 1994-95 season, when Jim Calhoun’s team won its first 13. That number could be matched in a big way Friday night, but UConn will have to sweep the season series with Richard before it can start thinking about Rick.

Hurley’s message hasn’t changed much all season.

“It’s just more of the consistency point of the team and us trying to hit shots and play that full 40, just playing as hard as possible,” Braylon Mullins said after he returned from concussion protocol to score 16 points in Omaha Saturday. He made five of the team’s 13 3-pointers in Cincinnati. “I think, just for the next couple of games, especially Xavier and St. John’s, we’ve got two hard ones in the conference, just trying to repeat what we did (at Creighton). I think that’s what the message was and we’re gonna try to fulfill that.”