Villanova Wildcats vs St. John's Red Storm Prediction, Odds and Picks for Today, 02/28/26

The game of the night in the Big East features the Villanova Wildcats at the St. John’s Red Storm. St. John’s, of course, is coming off an embarrassing loss at UConn in which it infamously missed its final 24 shots from the field. The temptation here is to overreact and decide that the Red Storm are a bad team — or a bad shooting team — and start fading them. That would be a mistake. We might live the rest of our lives and never see a team miss its final 24 shots — and certainly not team that is, in fact, good. It is just one of those wild outlier moments that, of course, only happens when you bet on a team (as I did). The Johnnies need a bounce-back game, and I am backing them at -7.5.

Villanova is a good basketball team. The ‘Cats are in third in the Big East and they are basically handling everyone not named UConn and St. John’s — who account for 3 of their 4 conference losses. The Wildcats are good, but surely St. John’s comes out playing angry. This is a team with a top 20 defense that plays fast, attacks the rim and shoots a ton of free throws. Villanova is going to have to value the basketball, score on its first shot attempt often and keep the Johnnies off the foul line. I don’t think the Wildcats can do that for 40 minutes. This is a pride game for the Red Storm.

Villanova vs St. John’s prediction: St. John’s -7.5 (-115) available at time of publication. Playable at that number.

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