Epic St. John’s-UConn showdown is NYC basketball clash of the year — so far

Times are good for the city game. You might argue they’ve rarely been better. St. John’s is on an eight-game winning streak. The Knicks are on an eight-game winning streak. Every day for the last few weeks the two of them have alternated turns on the stage — Johnnies and Knicks, Knicks and Johnnies — and they’ve done their share to warm this bitter patch of winter around here.

All of it has been leading up to Friday.

Friday in Detroit, the Knicks will take on the Pistons, the only team sitting north of them in the NBA’s Eastern Conference. The last time they visited Little Caesar’s Arena it did not go well, and they got hammered by 31 points. That was right in the middle of the 2-9 stretch that bridged the old calendar year and the new. They didn’t look much like contenders. But they do now.

And Friday at Madison Square Garden, the Johnnies will host the Connecticut Huskies, 22-1 on the year, No. 3 in the nation, riding an 18-game winning streak of their own. The Huskies are the only team that sits north of St. John’s in the Big East standings. For a long time in December, it sure seemed like the Johnnies didn’t look like they belonged in the same sentence as UConn, let alone the same weight class.