March 8, 2025
BIG EAST Tournament: Day 1 storylines and takeaways
By Tee Baker
How St. John's, Georgetown and Xavier advanced to the quarterfinals
UNCASVILLE, Conn. — The BIG EAST Tournament tipped off Friday morning from Mohegan Sun Arena, and fans were treated to three games featuring the conference’s Nos. 6-11 seeds competing for a spot in Saturday’s quarterfinals. By the end of the day of matinee hoops, No. 8 seed St. John’s, No. 10 Georgetown and No. 11 Xavier were left standing and live to see another day.
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What were the day’s key storylines? Which players impressed? What games should fans keep an eye on as the tournament progresses? Let’s get into it.
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Kelsey Ransom carries Hoyas with career-best scoring performance
With two seconds remaining in regulation against No. 7 seed Providence, in a game knotted at 56, Georgetown captain Kelsey Ransom stepped to the free throw line. Despite the Friars’ jeering band and the general rowdiness of the midday crowd, she calmly hit both free throws, which ended up being the game-winning shots.
“We do clutch free throws every day,” Ransom told reporters postgame. “I work on my free throws in between every single drill while I’m tired and fatigued. I stepped up there [today], and I said, ‘I’ve done this — step up and knock it down.’ It’s just one of those things that you do.”
Ransom ended the night with a career-high 36 points on 14-for-22 shooting from the field. Whenever the Hoyas needed her, she answered the call — as she’s done time and time again in her five-year Georgetown career. And, as good of a player as she is, she’s an even better teammate, never missing an opportunity to credit her teammates or coaching staff.
“Being in the position I’m in is a blessing and a fantastic position to be in,” she said. “Not everyone gets the opportunity to do what I do on the floor. So credit to my coaches for trusting me to do that and my
teammates for trusting me to do that. We put each other in the best possible position.
“So it’s 36 points, but that’s 36 points off of great screens and fantastic passes, and my teammates knowing where I need the ball and us getting rebounding and getting fast break points. It all starts as a collective on defense.”
A career-high performance for Ransom is the cherry on top of her accomplished collegiate career. The team captain has earned BIG EAST Player of the Week, Freshman of the Week and 15 BIG EAST Weekly Honor Roll nods in her career. She’s the only player in GU history with 1,000 points, 500 rebounds and 500 assists. A two-time First Team All-BIG EAST honoree, Ransom is among the nation’s leaders in minutes played, led the league in scoring in the regular season at 19.8 points per game, and ranked second in the league with 6.0 rebounds per game.
Ransom’s performance on Friday is the perfect encapsulation of who she is and who she’s been. When it’s all said and done — regardless of where the Hoyas end up this postseason — she’ll go down as one of the greats in Georgetown history.
“It’s just her will,” Georgetown head coach Darnell Haney told reporters. “She will not be denied. She’s the ultimate … winner. She finds a way to get it done.”
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St. John’s earns date with UConn
With a 66-50 victory over No. 9 seed Butler, St. John’s earned a spot in the quarterfinals and a date with the No. 1 seed and overwhelming tournament favorite, nationally ranked UConn. In two matchups against the Huskies this season, St. John’s was outscored by 64 points — a 26-point defeat in Queens in January and a 38-point road loss in February, scorched by UConn guard Azzi Fudd‘s 34-point performance.
“I thought we did a much better job in the first game with Connecticut than we did in the second,” St. John’s head coach Joe Tartamella told reporters. “How are we better [now]? I think we’ve got to find a way to make more shots. … Fudd was outscoring us for like the whole game at some point. I think we’re maybe a little more confident, but they can take your confidence real quick.”
Indeed, UConn can easily break a team’s confidence with its All-American talent, elite defense and unrelenting pace of play. The Huskies have long dominated the BIG EAST, winning 23 conference tournament titles. It would be understandable for Tartamella — who has been involved with the Red Storm program for over two decades, beginning as a graduate assistant in 2002 — to be frustrated by the prospect of facing an overpowering Huskies team each postseason. Instead, he views playing against Connecticut as a feature, not a bug, of competing in the BIG EAST.
“Our league is based upon, yes, we have great coaches, and we need great players, but we also need to have the ability to play against the people who are the best in the country. So that’s an important thing to me,” Tartamella said. “It’s been my whole life. I’ve spent time in the league when it was Louisville, West Virginia, Notre Dame, Rutgers — Hall of Fame coaches down the line. I learned more in those 10 years than I learned in my entire career because of what I was exposed to.
“People who want to come and play here will be exposed to that. They can compete against that, and they elevate everything that we do.”
So when the Huskies and Red Storm face off on Saturday afternoon, Tartamella will have his team prepared to compete. Win or lose, his program will take something away from playing against a UConn team with Final Four aspirations.
“I don’t want to shy away from it, and they might beat us by 75,” Tartamella said. “But I told those guys in the locker room, ‘You have to come out and play and compete and then you have to leave it out there and make it feel right, make it look right, and make it sound right. That’s what matters.'”
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Xavier breaks the curse
The Xavier women’s basketball program did something on Friday that it hadn’t done in exactly one decade: Win a BIG EAST Tournament game. On March 7, 2015, the Musketeers defeated Georgetown 70-67, and on March 7, 2025, they defeated DePaul 80-73. The win improves Xavier’s all-time BIG EAST tournament record to 2-11.
“Anything is possible. We have nothing to prove,” redshirt sophomore guard Aizhanique Mayo, who finished the game with 27 points, told reporters following the win. “We want to go out and make it far, shock everybody.”
The win over the No. 6 seed does come as a bit of a shock, considering that Xavier has dwelled in the BIG EAST basement for several consecutive seasons. The program has won just seven conference games since the 2020-21 season began, going winless in the past two regular seasons (0-38). This season, the Musketeers finally broke the losing streak with a 1-point victory over Butler in January, their only conference win of the season.
“It’s huge for our growth, for kind of a reminder of even though we didn’t quite get it done the way we wanted to get it done this season, we’re still on the right path,” Xavier second-year head coach Billi Chambers told reporters. “We’re still building something pretty special. I’m super proud of how hard they worked to bring this one home.”
The Musketeers haven’t experienced much success since the late 2000s, when they were a member of the Atlantic 10 and coached by current Ohio State head coach Kevin McGuff. Chambers, a two-time MAAC Coach of the Year at Iona, is a promising young leader poised to change Xavier’s fortunes. Although it’s been much of the same since she arrived at Xavier, she knows that rebuilds take time, and they start with hard work and hustle.
“There’s something truly special about a team that never stops fighting, and that’s who we want to be, a defensive-minded team,” Chambers said. “You never quit. You play from buzzer to buzzer to get after it.”
Although it may seem like a blip in an otherwise lackluster Xavier campaign, Friday’s win is a significant building block for the foundation Chambers hopes to construct.
“This coaching staff is here to build,” Chambers said. “We knew we took on a really tough lift, and we’re here for every single moment of it: the good, the bad, the hard. And we’re excited to take this program back to national prominence.”
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Written by Tee Baker
Tee has been a contributor to The Next since March Madness 2021 and is currently a contributing editor, BIG EAST beat reporter and curator of historical deep dives.
