Northwestern, Davidson in Holiday Festival

Along with scheduled matchups for the Red Storm in the Great Alaska Shootout (November 23-27, against Ball State and with Arizona State as the other marquee team; more here), a continuation of the series with the Duke Blue Devils, and a match against UCLA in Los Angeles on February 2nd5th* (that's going to be interesting, going cross-country and then back WITHIN the Big East schedule), and a rumored match against St. Bonaventure on December 7th in New York at Carnesecca Arena, St. John's seems to have some solid matchups for the Holiday Festival in Madison Square Garden.

This includes a tilt against the Northwestern Wildcats, per Lindsey Willhite of the Daily Herald:

Northwestern hasn’t wrapped up its non-conference schedule, but one thing is set in stone: The Wildcats will travel to Madison Square Garden to play in the Holiday Festival on Dec. 20-21. St. John’s and Davidson are in the field, too, but the fourth team is TBA.

Here's hoping the 4th team is a local. Fordham is likely already on next year's schedule - I believe there should be a game AT Rose Hill Gym against the Rams (aka the Uterus) on December 11th. So the 4th local team might be Hofstra, or even a lower-level school like Marist/ Fairfield/ Wagner/ St. Francis (NY) from the area. Maybe even Cornell again.

But I love bringing the Davidson Wildcats back - they're a tough group that is likely to be better than last year's 16-15 model. And Northwestern is sneaky solid, with the excellent Kevin Coble coming back from injury to join with John Shurna and Michael Thompson to break the Wildcats' very long NCAA Tournament appearance drought, which spans forever... they have never made the tourney.