Watch, Monitor, Don't: December 22, 2023
Happy Holidays!
Or I’m sorry about your sudden and dramatic proximity to family. Whatever applies to your situation, specifically.
Each week during the year, we’ll talk about three games on the weekend slate—one you have to see, one you have to keep an eye on and one you should avoid at all costs. It’s like going through the sweets buffet at a party and advising you as to which cookies will give you food poisoning.
As always, the weekend begins at 7 p.m. ET on Friday. Apologies to an excellent George Mason-Tulane tilt Friday afternoon that absolutely would have been this week’s Must Monitor if it tipped a few hours later. Thems the breaks some weeks.
Must Watch (Times ET)
No. 5 UConn at St. John’s (8 p.m., Saturday, FOX)
This looked more appetizing before the Huskies got waxed by Seton Hall on Wednesday night, but the plan remains the plan.
We’ll get to UConn and what hasn’t looked quite right in a second, but first season of Rick Pitino in the Bronx is going pretty well. At 8-3, the Johnnies haven’t embarrassed themselves at any point (even the loss at Barclays Center to Boston College was semi-explicable) and even took down Utah on a neutral court in Charleston.