The Huskies are double-digit favorites on the road.
UConn men’s basketball is coming down to the last quarter of the season, with seven regular season games remaining. Two of those games are against Big East cellar-dweller Seton Hall, which will host the Huskies on Saturday afternoon in their best chance to get a road win.
The Pirates have had a trying season, with just one win since Dec. 4, coming on Jan. 8 at home against DePaul. Two of their six wins, including the one over the Blue Demons, came in overtime, while three more were over bottom-60 competition.
Seton Hall enters on a nine-game losing streak with only one remaining regular season contest that has a win percentage above 20 percent.
The Huskies, meanwhile, put together a strong performance last time out against Creighton, winning in Omaha for the first time in program history. This starts a relatively favorable end to the regular season, as UConn is favored in six of its last seven. The final one is on the road against St. John’s.
TV: FOX
Radio: UConn Sports Network
Odds: UConn -14.5, over/under 133.5
Location: Prudential Center — Newark, NJ
KenPom Predicted Score: UConn 72, Seton Hall 62 (84 percent win probability)
Series History
UConn and Seton Hall first played in the 1916-17 season and this is the 73rd matchup in program history. The Huskies are 49-23 all-time. More recently, the Pirates and UConn have split the regular season matchups each year since the Huskies returned to the Big East and Dan Hurley has lost his last three games inside Prudential Center. The program has a 6-5 record all-time in downtown Newark.
What to Watch For
Don’t make it difficult
UConn has seven regular season games remaining and the two best chances for victories are both against Seton Hall. The Pirates are by far the worst team in the Big East, sitting at No. 213 in KenPom, nearly 100 spots below DePaul, the next-lowest team. The Huskies are 7-1 against sub-100 KenPom teams and each win over a sub-200 team came by at least 30 points.
Shaheen Holloway’s team beat VCU in overtime, but other than that, the Pirates are 0-4 against KenPom top-50 teams and none of the games have been particularly close. The offense is one of the 60 worst in Division I and doesn’t stretch the floor, with a crawling tempo, while the 3-point shot is not a big part of Seton Hall’s game.
However, Prudential Center has been a house of horrors as of late. A top-five team lost here last season by double digits, and blew a double-digit halftime lead the year before that. UConn’s last win over Seton Hall in this building coming in 2013.
If done properly, this can be a get-right game for a defense that has been playing better but is overall below UConn’s recent standards, as lofty as they are, while Alex Karaban surely needs the confidence-building opportunity that playing a team with one win since Dec. 4 can provide. However, the Huskies have not made it easy on themselves against Seton Hall in recent years.
Interior defense
Seton Hall’s offense, which is almost 100 spots behind the next-lowest power conference team in adjusted offensive efficiency at KenPom, is not only well below the Big East’s standards, but it’s also one-dimensional.
Just 31.1 percent of the Pirates’ field goal attempts are beyond the arc. That’s the 21st-lowest rate in Division I, leaving them heavily reliant on 2-pointers. They’re not particularly good at shooting them, with a 43.7 percent shooting percentage that’s in the nation’s bottom 10. Meanwhile, Seton Hall has 10.9 percent of its field goals blocked, which is knocking on the door of a sub-300 ranking.
UConn isn’t the best defensive team, with a KenPom ranking just inside the top 100, but interior defense is its biggest strength. The Huskies have a top-20 rating in 2-point defense (45.8 percent) and are second in block rate (18.1 percent). If the guards and wings can funnel the ball inside to Tarris Reed Jr., Karaban and Samson Johnson, the Pirates are going to have a tough day at the office.
The one thing the Huskies will need to watch out for is free throws. Seton Hall can get to the line and UConn is notorious for committing a ton of fouls. The one silver lining is that the Pirates shoot just 67 percent from the charity stripe, which is a bottom-40 rate.
Watch the turnovers
UConn turned the ball over a ton against Marquette and St. John’s, but had just six against Creighton last time out, for a nine percent turnover percentage after being above 30.0 percent the previous two outings. The Huskies will want to channel that kind of ball security, rather than what they showed in their first back-to-back losses at Gampel Pavilion since 2016.
The Pirates have a middle-of-the-road defense that’s driven by its ability to force turnovers. They do so 21.6 percent of the time, which is a top-20 mark in the country, carrying Seton Hall to a top-125 defensive efficiency rating, even as it’s in the bottom 50 in effective field goal percentage against.
This is one way that the Pirates will be able to stay in the game, since the Huskies will have the opportunity to shoot. Hold onto the ball and Seton Hall won’t be able to keep up. Start giving them free points, and the Pirates will keep this much closer than UConn would like.