Syracuse basketball to make a splashy return at Madison Square Garden facing St. John's

Happy, Orange Nation?

Syracuse is finalizing plans to head back in the Big Apple with a Big Bang (the all important Borough of Manhattan, that is) as College Hoops Today reported Tuesday that SU and SJU are nearing completion of a deal to play in the upcoming season (also confirmed by a source Tuesday to The Juice Online - On SI).

Get ready for the early-season build-up with the new Gerry McNamara era as the Orange face old friend Rick Pitino and newer, old friend Donnie Freeman of the Red Storm. The marquee out-of-conference meeting has to be fitted into a St. John's MSG home game date within the building's annual busy end-of-year calendar.

As he has indicated since he was introduced as head coach, McNamara wants to play a blend of competition in his non-conference schedule, from neutral sites to true road games against top ranked teams, along with the balance of hosting smaller, lower-Quad programs in the Dome to prep for the ACC portion of the schedule.

Hoping to make the Garden an annual early-season stop on the Orange schedule

Syracuse teams have played 174 games in one incarnation of the Garden or another since 1939, winning NCAA, NIT, and conference tournament games in two different buildings. Of course, SU is most noted for the Big East era games (1979-2012) at the present Garden, most memorably by the six overtime, thrilling victory against Connecticut in 2009.

It has been five long seasons since an Orange return to MSG, hampered by the COVID outbreak, and overall scheduling difficulties with other programs also wanting to play a game in a building that hosts an average of 300-350 events annually (including the upcoming 2027 NCAA Tournament East Regional).

But it is a priority for G-Mac, like his coach Jim Boeheim, to play in New York each season, and what storylines will be in the offing in a matchup of former Syracuse assistant coaches almost 35 years apart, and for the second consecutive year in Freeman, some 'Cuse players will be facing a former teammate, as occurred this past season with Chris Bell at Cal.

The long Syracuse-St. John's rivalry is renewed from its slumber

When announced officially, the upcoming season's game between the two former Big East rivals will be the 96th all-time contest going all the way back to 1901, and will mark another distinctly different coaching matchup on both sidelines with a Hall of Famer and Orange playing legend matching strategy.

The last time SU and SJU faced off was in 2002 in Brooklyn in the Empire Classic, a Red Storm OT victory under Mike Anderson in Jim Boeheim's final season at the 'Cuse.. The last time the team's met at MSG (a December Sunday matinee) was 2015, also a Red Storm win coming under coach Chris Mullin against Boeheim.

A season later in 2016, Mullin and a Red Storm squad with a losing record entering the Dome, embarrassed Boeheim and the Orange 90-63.

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