The Georgetown–St. John's men's basketball rivalry is a college basketball rivalry between the Georgetown Hoyas men's basketball team of Georgetown University and St. John's Red Storm men's basketball team of St. John's University. The first meeting between the two schools was on December 8, 1909, which St. John's won 41–26. The two teams played off and on after that until 1965, when they began annually scheduled games, and the rivalry intensified when both programs became founding members of the original Big East Conference in 1979.
The rivalry was brought to national attention during the 1984–85 NCAA Division I men's basketball season when both programs were ranked #1 and #2 throughout the season and met on four occasions, including during the 1985 Big East Tournament championship game and the 1985 NCAA Tournament Final Four. In the schools' first meeting of the 1984–85 Big East season on January 26, 1985, at a sold-out Capital Centre, No. 2 St. John's upset the No. 1 Hoyas, breaking a 29-game Georgetown winning streak with St. John's coach Lou Carnesecca wearing an old sweater to keep warm while suffering from a common cold. It became his "lucky sweater," and he wore it at every game that followed as what were then known as the Redmen won another ten games in a row. With their rivalry at its peak, the two teams then met at a sold-out Madison Square Garden on February 27, 1985, with St. John's ranked No. 1 and the Hoyas No. 2. When Carnesecca — wearing his sweater — and Georgetown coach John Thompson, Jr., met courtside for a pregame handshake, Thompson opened his coat to reveal that he was wearing a replica T-shirt of Carnesecca's sweater, drawing a roar of laughter from the crowd. Georgetown went on to end the Redmen's winning streak with an 85–69 victory in a nationally televised game that went down in the history of both schools as "The Sweater Game."
The teams met in the championship game of the 2003 National Invitation Tournament and St. John's defeated Georgetown to win that year's NIT. St. John's later vacated the win and its championship due its use of an ineligible player.
The rivalry continued as both schools moved to the new Big East Conference in 2013 during the 2010–2014 NCAA conference realignment. Renewed interest in the rivalry arose when the programs were coached by their respective Hall of Fame players from the 1984–85 season, Chris Mullin and Patrick Ewing. Their tenures overlapped: Mullin coached St. John's from 2015 to 2019, and Ewing coached Georgetown from 2017 to 2023.
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