TD Garden plays host to at least 41 NBA games each season, but the Boston venue is hosting NCAA Tournament games this week for the first time since 2018.The tournament's No. 1 overall seed, the University of Connecticut, will be front and center when the Huskies face the San Diego State University Aztecs in the Sweet 16 on Thursday.The game is a rematch of last year's national championship game, which UConn won by nearly 20 points.Massachusetts native Alex Karaban will be in UConn's starting five. The redshirt sophomore forward, who stands 6 feet, 8 inches tall, is from Southborough and starred as a freshman at Algonquin Regional High School before playing two years at the New Hampton School in New Hampshire and graduating from IMG Academy in Florida.Karaban is a projected first-round pick if he declares for this year's NBA draft, but he is currently focused on helping the Huskies win back-to-back titles."I played here in AAU games when I was younger," Karaban said of TD Garden. "Then my freshman year in high school, I played a game here as well against Belmont. So I've been here a bunch of times.""You know, Alex is a Celtics guy. I'm more of a Knicks guy. So we have a battle. We clash a little bit," said UConn senior guard Hassan Diarra, a native of Queens, New York. "But I mean playing Boston, it has such rich culture. Seventeen championships, the NBA team, so it's going to be electric. It's going to be a great feeling, and we're going to be ready for it."Tip-off between 1-seed UConn and 5-seed San Diego State is scheduled for 7:39 p.m. Thursday. The second Sweet 16 game at TD Garden, which is between 2-seed Iowa State and 3-seed Illinois, is set to start at 10:09 p.m.The winners of the Sweet 16 games will face off in the Elite Eight at TD Garden on Saturday. The tip-off time for that game has not yet been announced.