COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. – The Saint John's University basketball team is scheduled to face Division I St. Thomas in an exhibition game at 7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 11, at the new Lee & Penny Anderson Arena in St. Paul.
The contest will serve as an exhibition for the Johnnies, but a regular-season game for UST.
Tickets will be available at a later date on tommiesports.com.
The rest of SJU's 2025-26 basketball schedule will be announced soon.
The exhibition game will be the first between the two basketball programs since 2021, when the Tommies won both meetings during the COVID-impacted 2020-21 season. Prior to that shortened season, SJU had won six of the previous eight meetings in the series.
UST left the MIAC following the 2020-21 academic year for Division I and finished second in the Summit League last season with a 12-4 record (24-10 overall).
SJU (25-4, 15-1 MIAC) won its 12th MIAC regular-season championship (fourth in the last six seasons) and earned the conference's automatic bid to the NCAA Division III Tournament with a 74-59 win over Carleton March 1 for the program's fourth MIAC Playoff championship in the last six tournaments (ninth overall).
The national postseason appearance was the Johnnies' 22nd (13th at the Division III level) and fifth in the last seven seasons. SJU ended the season ranked No. 13 in the final D3hoops.com Top 25 poll.
The 20-win season was the Johnnies' 16th overall and sixth in the past nine seasons. Three of SJU's four losses were decided by four points or less.
The Johnnies, however, return only one of their top nine scorers – senior guard Kyle Johnson (Prior Lake, Minn./DeLaSalle) – in 2025-26.
Pat McKenzie '04 boasts the best winning percentage – .777 (199-57 record) in 10 seasons – among active NCAA Division III head coaches and the 10th-best across all divisions. He has directed the Johnnies to a 146-34 (.811) conference record, five MIAC regular-season championships, five NCAA Tournament appearances and four MIAC Playoff titles.