HARTFORD – The No. 11 UConn men’s basketball team (8-3, 0-0 BIG EAST) begins its two-division BIG EAST title defense Wednesday night when it hosts Xavier (8-3, 0-0 BIG EAST) in the league’s opening game . Kickoff from the XL Center is scheduled for 7 p.m. on FS1, with Alex Faust and Bill Raftery on the phone.

UConn is coming off a top-10 win over then-No. 8 Gonzaga on Saturday night and won their 10th^Th-directly in New York City with a 77-71 triumph at Madison Square Garden. It was Connecticut’s fourth straight win after its tumultuous game in Maui and put the Huskies back in the national conversation. Xavier has to accept a bitter setback on Saturday in Cincinnati. Both teams were ranked in the top three of the BIG EAST Preseason Coaches Poll as they begin league play on Wednesday.

Connecticut is looking to extend its league record of 11 regular-season titles and eight tournament titles as the true 20-game round-robin tournament begins. Curiously, despite those titles, UConn is just 18-20 in BIG EAST openers since joining the league at the start of the 1979-80 season and returning in 2020 after a seven-year hiatus. Dan Hurley UConn is 1-5 in league openers and the Huskies haven’t won a conference opener at home since 2011.

The Huskies are 6-4 against Xavier in a streak that dates back to the second round of the 1991 NCAA Tournament. The last eight meetings took place as league colleagues. The two teams met three times last season, with Connecticut winning the regular season series before claiming a 27-point victory in the quarterfinals of the BIG EAST Tournament. Xavier’s last visit to the XL Center came in January 2024, a memorable one in which UConn knocked down a program-record 17 3-pointers and posted the third-largest single-game point margin in conference history in the 99-56 victory.

Liam McNeeley led the Huskies against Gonzaga on Saturday and was named BIG EAST Freshman of the Week with a career-high 26 points, a game-high eight rebounds and four assists without a turnover. This season McNeeley is second among both the Huskies and BIG EAST freshmen in scoring (13.6 ppg) and rebounding (6.1 rpg). Alex Karaban is UConn’s leading scorer with 15.6 points per game and 5.0 rebounds and 1.9 blocks per game. Solo ball (12.5 ppg) and Tarris Reed Jr. (11.1 ppg, 8.0 rpg) are also in the double-digit average for the Huskies.

Xavier is off to an 8-3 start this season, with quality wins over non-league Wake Forest and South Carolina. Zach Freemantle leads Xavier with 16.9 points and 7.7 rebounds per game, but head coach Sean Miller announced this week that he will be out indefinitely with a lower-body injury. Ryan Conwell scores 16.5 points per game on 44.8 percent shooting from 3-point range and Dayvion McKnight scores 10.3 points per game to go with a team-high 4.7 assists per game.

After Wednesday night’s league opener, UConn will hit the road to close out 2024 on Dec. 21 at Butler.