11/8/2026

St. John's Red Storm Men's Basketball (Big East) @ Madison Square Garden (New York, NY)

Basketball at the Garden for those on a (relative) budget

James Calingo

Tags:
Basketball, Big East, College Basketball, College Sports, Indoor Sports, New York, Repeat Visit, St John's University

Let's be real: inasmuch as the New York Rangers draw people (like myself)...Madison Square Garden's real draw is the Knicks.

Even when the Knicks were awful about 20 years ago, it seemed like they still managed to draw strong crowds and garner massive attention (though said attention was often not good). Of course, now that they're one of the best teams in the NBA AND the defending champions, getting into a Knicks game is DIFFICULT (not to mention the fact that even the secondary market can't save you from triple-digit ticket prices - I checked¹). However, they're not the only basketball team that plays at MSG - there's also the St. John's Red Storm!

St. John's University is a (relatively) smaller school out in the FAR reaches of Queens (read: nowhere close to the subway²), but is probably best known for its basketball team as a Big East member. You may be surprised to learn that the team has the eighth most wins in the country all time, but in spite of all of that...they've yet to win the NCAA Tournament (though they do have a "pre-tournament" national title). While the team has produced talents such as Chris Mullin, Mark Jackson, and a player who entered the NBA as Ron Artest³, I would argue the team is probably most notable right now for its head coach: former Boston Celtics legend coach Rick Pitino (who I once saw wearing sweatpants - it's a weird story).

The school does have an on-campus arena, which the team plays about half of its games in. However, that arena was built in 1961 and seats only 5,000 or so, but given the reputations of both St. John's and the Big East, expected crowds often exceed that, so the team plays a significant part of its schedule at MSG and has since 1931 according to Wikipedia (which means that the arrangement predates both the on-campus arena and the current Madison Square Garden). I won't go over Madison Square Garden in detail as I was here two months ago, but I do think it is worth noting that in addition to St. John's, MSG hosts the Big East's conference tournament each year (similar to how the Hockey East tournament is at TD Garden).

Going to this game was...a bit of a gamble. I had picked it out as "the move" a while ago, but a couple of weeks prior to this game happening, I saw some pretty good seats for another game were available for a SHOCKINGLY good price (partially as it was an exhibition game that "doesn't count"). However, said game was October 25th - i.e. the day after I went to TWO hockey games, and in the end, I was unable to get the tickets due to my hesitancy⁴. Had I not found a deal that beat that (or came close to it), I probably would not have been able to see St. John's altogether (as games get WAY pricier after today), but in the end, however, I managed to land THIS (even though I probably could've waited a bit more):

This game is one of the out-of-conference games big teams like to put at the beginning of their schedule as an easy "win" (y'know, what Rutgers THOUGHT they were getting when they scheduled UMass). It featured the "Johnnies" (as they're commonly called) taking on the school Rick Pitino coached immediately before St. John's: Iona (which is up in New Rochelle, NY - the last stop for southbound Amtrak trains right before Penn Station). Like the Rutgers-UMass football game, no one expected Iona to actually win, but UNLIKE that game, St. John's actually took care of business and won handily - scoring over 100 points in the process (something which is kinda rare in college basketball).

With that in mind, however, if you DO want to watch St. John's games at MSG to avoid the high prices for Knicks games, be mindful that much like any other big sport/team, ticket prices vary by opponent. As the Big East is one of the country's more well known basketball conferences, you can expect this variance to be quite wide; for example, there's a game against UConn later this season where the "get-in" price is comparable to a Knicks game...

P.S.: One of the things that "pushed" me towards going to this game: an unused train ticket from NYC Marathon Day because it was not collected (due to how crowded the train was between the marathon and the Jets playing at home that day)⁵.

MERCH

I'm going to stick with just what's at Madison Square Garden for this section, which unfortunately means...that there's not much. There were three merchandise booths around the arena (one in the lobby and one for both the lower and upper concourses), but they had mainly just hats and shirts (no jerseys), plus a few novelties. However, I must say that I CANNOT comprehend why some of the items they had were as expensive as they were; for example, I won't say how much it was, but a mini basketball was available for almost double the price of similar basketballs I saw on the Dick's Sporting Goods website (though I will also admit that I checked if it was available online and it was STILL overpriced...but not by as much).

Of course, there's probably a MUCH BIGGER selection at the St. John's bookstore (where, of course, you can get just about anything you'd want - hats, shirts/hoodies, jerseys, and so on), but I've never been there.

As an aside, there is a distinct possibility that this is my last NYC trip for 2026 - not just for sports, but in general (unless I REALLY need to see the Rockefeller Center tree before 2027 for some inexplicable reason). Of course, I'll be back next year for a LOT of reasons (including, well...sports).

ON DECK

I'm also going to be "taking a break" after three games in three days (and also because I have a LOT of IRL stuff to take care of after all these games in the last eight weeks), but I'll be back soon enough, as I'm going to be checking out a college hockey powerhouse that may surprise you.