Longtime friend of Rick Pitino in the middle of technical foul saga with Dan Hurley

If you didn't think there would be drama early on Friday night between Rick Pitino and Dan Hurley, you'd be sorely mistaken.

Madison Square Garden was juiced and every basket in the first half sounded like a go-ahead bucket does in the final minute, but the building was ready to explode with 8:16 left in the first half.

Joel Soriano was called for his second foul as Cam Spencer challenged the Red Storm center in the paint and Pitino took exception the call after Chris Ledlum was already on the bench with two fouls.

The St. John's head coach was immediately hit with a technical foul as he argued the call, although it didn't appear like he said anything that crossed the line.

"I haven't had a technical in a really long time. I was really looking forward to that moment," he said after the 95-90 loss.

However, as the official was going to relay to the scorers table the fouls, UConn head coach Danny Hurley was assessed a technical. It seemed unclear what Hurley did to draw the foul, but it was later revealed that he was jawing with Pitino's longtime friend, Tom O'Grady.

"[O'Grady] was on the court yelling at the refs, and then he started yelling at me, you know, and moving in my direction. So, I was just kind of pointing out to James [Breeding] that he was behaving worse than Coach Pitino," Hurley explained.

"And then I got a technical for pointing out more increasingly aggressive fans. At court side, you shouldn’t end up on the court."

Hurley has been very involved interacting with overly aggressive fans in his career, but this season he has received backlash for his actions and remarks towards fans in road games against Creighton and Providence.

"It was a lot of expletives," Hurley claimed at what O'Grady was saying to him.

"And I'm probably now the boy who cried wolf...but I promise you if we play Marquette tomorrow night, there will be no incident because those people are incredibly classy fans and we have incredible respect for them."

O'Grady said after the game that all he did was tell the officials that Hurley was out of the coaches box.

At halftime, it looked like Hurley was trying to have security remove O'Grady from his seats, but the UConn head coach said it was the complete opposite.

"I kept him in. They were going to eject him from the game. I went over there to tell the ushers I wanted him to stay, not because I thought he was a good guy, I though it might be bad luck."

However, Hurley was caught on camera during the altercation saying, "this guy should be out of here...get him out of here."

O'Grady returned to his seats for the second half and remained there until the final buzzer with no extra curricular activity in the handshake line.