By Jim Scott
DNAinfo Senior Editor
MANHATTAN — Rice High School alumni Edgar Sosa and Kemba Walker are no strangers to playing basketball under the bright lights in New York City.
Sosa and Walker return to Manhattan hoping to lead their respective teams to a Big East tournament championship at Madison Square Garden this week.
Walker's Connecticut team has lost three straight games to land itself squarely on the NCAA tournament bubble heading into this week. The 12th-seeded Huskies are in the unfamiliar position of needing at least two wins to secure an NCAA tournament bid.
Connecticut plays No. 13 St. John's in their Big East tournament opener at 2 p.m. on Tuesday. Walker, a sophomore guard, led the Huskies with 5.2 assists per game and was tied for second on the team with 14.9 points per game.
The Red Storm finished 6-12 in the Big East during the regular season and lost to Connecticut, 75-59, in their only meeting this season on Jan. 20.
Walker, a point guard and Bronx native, scored 18.2 points per game as a senior at Rice in 2008. Sosa played for Rice in 2006 before moving on to play basketball for Rick Pitino's Louisville Cardinals.
Louisville, the No. 6 seed, has a first-round bye in the Big East tournament and plays the winner of Tuesday night's match-up between Cincinnati and Rutgers in the second round on Wednesday.
Sosa is second on the Cardinals in scoring at 12.8 points per game and leads the team with 4.6 assists per game.
The Cincinnati Bearcats are led by enigmatic freshman and Brooklyn native Lance Stephenson. Stephenson led Abraham Lincoln High School to back-to-back PSAL titles in 2007 and 2008 and finished his career as New York state's all-time leading scorer with 2,946 points.
The 6-foot-5 Stephenson has struggled during his freshman year in Cincinnati, averaging 12 points points per game and shooting just 20.3 percent from 3-point range.
The tournament opens Tuesday with a match up between 9th-seeded South Florida and 16th-seeded DePaul at noon.
Top seeds Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Villanova and West Virginia don't play until the quarterfinals on Thursday. Marquette, Georgetown and Notre Dame play in the second round on Wednesday.
