New York – For the third time in less than a year, UConn participated in a championship-trophy lifting and net-cutting ceremony on Saturday night.

Yes, life is pretty darn good in Huskyland.

The top-seeded Huskies celebrated the program’s first Big East tournament championship since 2011 at Madison Square Garden.

They did it by beating the defending tournament champion Marquette, 73-57, the same team that eliminated them in last year’s semifinals.

Ever since that loss, they have been on a mission, which they accomplished by pulling away in the final 10 minutes.

Sophomore center Donovan Clingan had a monster game, finishing with 22 points, a Big East tourney title game record tying 16 rebounds and two blocks. Veteran guard Tristen Newton provided 13 points and 10 assists.

Newton earned the Dave Gavitt Most Outstanding Player honor while Clingan was named to the all-tournament team.

“I just tried to attack the game with a different mindset and try to be as dominant and as powerful as I can,” said Clingan, who’s the first player since Georgetown’s Patrick Ewing in 1984 to post at least 20 points and 15 rebounds in the title game.

The Huskies (31-3) earned the Big East’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. They’re expected to receive a No. 1 seed — perhaps the top overall top seed — when the field is announced on Selection Sunday.

“We’ve done a lot of historic things...,” coach Dan Hurley said. “I know we’ve never gotten a No. 1 overall seed in program history. This is a group that seems to be making history in a place that it’s hard to make history.

“... We’ve clearly been the best program in the country this year.”

Just last April, they cut down the nets at NRG Stadium in Houston after winning the program’s fifth national title. Then, on March 3 after beating Seton Hall, they repeated the championship celebration ritual after clinching the Big East regular season title outright.

“Count the Final Four one, too,” redshirt sophomore Alex Karaban said. “That’s four. It’s going to be hard to process. Just being able to win every award possible as a team already, I can’t even think about it right now.

“It’s really a dream come true. The best part about it is, I play for the hungriest coach ever, and we’re going to want more.”

With Saturday’s win, UConn (31-3) tied Georgetown for the most Big East tournament titles with eight. The Huskies also won both the regular season outright title and tournament championship for the first time since 1999.

“It’s a special group,” Hurley said.

Saturday’s championship game featured two teams ranked in the top 10 – UConn No. 2, Marquette No. 10.

A sold-out crowd of 19,812 showed up anticipating a masterpiece of a championship game.

Instead, they witnessed a messy, ugly contest. More finger painting than Picasso.

There were long stretches of brutally bad offensive basketball.

Eventually, UConn gained enough traction to gradually build a lead and found a way to grind out a championship victory.

A late surge carried the Huskies to victory.

Neither team led by more than four points until UConn freshman Jaylin Stewart buried a 3-pointer from the corner for a 44-39 edge with 10 minutes, 18 seconds left.

The basket gave UConn a lift.

After third-seeded Marquette (25-9) scored, Newton drained a 3-pointer for a six-point lead. His basket sparked a 16-3 run that ended with Hassan Diarra sinking a 3-pointer, pushing the advantage to 60-44 with 5:53 remaining.

The Huskies finally found their groove.

Stewart, who has played a limited but important role this season, was an unlikely hero. He scored all nine of his points during his stint on the floor.

“Probably the biggest shots of my life,” Stewart said. “It was electric in there today.”

The Huskies took it home from there, shooting a sizzling 63% (17 for 27) in the second half. With 21 assists, they set a Big East tournament three-game record with 73.

“I’m just proud of the way we responded,” guard Cam Spencer said.

Thanks to Newton’s 3-pointer, UConn went into the locker room with a 26-24 lead, tying the team’s lowest scoring half of the season.

After winning a shootout in Friday’s semifinals, the Huskies turned into the gang that couldn’t shoot straight in the first half. They shot an icy 30% (9 for 30).

This is the same team that converted a program best for a Big East tournament game (58.3%) in the quarterfinals and stayed hot in the semifinals, finishing at 57.4%.

It took UConn about six and a half minutes to score on Saturday, as it missed its first eight shots. The Huskies blew several layups.

Marquette caught the same cold, converting 32.3% (10 for 31) before the break.

Clingan was UConn’s only reliable offensive option. He had a double-double by halftime, with 10 points and 10 rebounds.

Given the offensive struggles, neither team could pull away.

Playing without All-Big East first team selection Tyler Kolek (oblique injury), Marquette smothered UConn’s perimeter weapons, holding Spencer and Karaban to a combined two points on 1 for 8 from the field in the first half.

The Huskies finally broke free in the second half. Clingan’s 3-point play handed his team the lead for good, 34-33.

But there was still plenty of work to do before they could raise the championship trophy and cut down the nets, again.

“It brings a lot of joy,” Spencer said about cutting the nets. “Hopefully, we can go do it again in Phoenix. That’s the next goal for us.”

Phoenix is the site of the year’s Final Four.

g.keefe@theday.com