Seton Hall Pirates at St. John's Red Storm

Friday night under the bright lights of Madison Square Garden, the top-seeded St. John's Red Storm look to punch their ticket to the Big East title game against a desperate Seton Hall Pirates squad. Seton Hall is fighting for their NCAA Tournament lives, bringing a phenomenal 15th-ranked adjusted defense (96.1 AdjDE) to the floor to muck up the game. However, St. John's is a different beast in this building. The Red Storm boast a massive +16.1 average scoring margin at home and bring an elite offense ranking 50th nationally in adjusted efficiency (119.0). While Seton Hall wants to grind this down to a 65.2 tempo slugfest, St. John's has the offensive firepower to survive the mud and pull away late.

The math heavily favors Rick Pitino's squad in a tournament setting that essentially serves as a home game. St. John's controls the possession battle through sheer volume, sporting an elite 36.2 percent offensive rebounding rate alongside a low 12.5 percent turnover rate. They simply get more bites at the apple than their opponents. When you combine that extra volume with a starting lineup shooting an effective 50.9 percent from the field, it becomes incredibly difficult for an offensively limited Seton Hall team (108.6 AdjOE) to keep pace. The Pirates rely heavily on Adam Clark's playmaking, but they lack the secondary scoring depth to match a Red Storm rotation that features four different active players averaging double figures.

We have already seen this movie twice this season, with St. John's taking both matchups by finding an extra gear, including shooting over 65 percent in the second half of their March 6 victory. The defining difference is Zuby Ejiofor, who is coming off a historic 21-point, 10-rebound, 5-assist, 3-block performance in the quarterfinals. Seton Hall does not have the interior answers to stop a player leading his team across all major statistical categories, especially with Ejiofor protecting the rim at a 2.4 blocks-per-game clip on the other end. Beating a conference opponent three times is a classic tournament narrative, but when the underlying efficiency metrics, possession volume, and venue all point to the favorite, you trust the data. St. John's has too much overall firepower to be denied in their own backyard.