AGAINST HALL ODDS
Holloway has unheralded Pirates punching way above their weight
PICK a surprising team. Wisconsin. Dayton. Ole Miss. None of them have come out of nowhere quite like Seton Hall. None of them performed as poorly as the Pirates across the first five weeks of the season. And none of them have the wins that Shaheen Holloway’s team now has.
Top-ranked Connecticut and No. 17 Marquette at home. Providence and Butler on the road. Four Quad 1 wins, and it really should be five, if not for a very unfriendly whistle in the tripleovertime loss to No. 18 Creighton on Saturday in Newark.
This was a team that most experts felt would be successful if it reached the NIT. The Big East coaches picked Seton Hall to finish ninth in the league. I agreed with both sentiments. I was at Prudential Center on Dec. 9, when a bad Rutgers team overwhelmed the Pirates.
Seton Hall is 8-2 since that loss. It is safely in the NCAA Tournament according to almost all projections despite that underwhelming non-conference performance that included losses to Rutgers, USC and Iowa and a bubbly NET ranking of 60. It has performed as well as anyone in the country over the last few weeks, just a game behind firstplace UConn atop the Big East. Remember, it beat those Huskies when they were at full strength. Kadary Richmond is a Big East Player of the Year front-runner, a dynamic lead guard who lives in the paint. Al-Amir Dawes and Dre Davis have emerged as quality second- and third- scoring options. Center Jaden Bediako, a Santa Clara transfer, hasn’t just surpassed expectations. He has lapped them, averaging careerhighs of 8.6 points, 7.6 rebounds and 1.9 blocks.
But this is about the coach and the toughness he instills. He got through to Richmond about the importance of consistency as a leader. He has brought in players that fit him — hard-nosed guys such as Davis, Dawes, Bediako and St. John’s transfer Dylan Addae-Wusu.
Really, this shouldn’t be a surprise if you followed Holloway’s coaching arc. He was pivotal to Seton Hall’s emergence under former coach Kevin Willard as his lead recruiter and point guard developer. At Saint Peter’s, everyone remembers the remarkable Elite Eight run, but he also finished in the top-three of the MAAC three times in four seasons with the conference’s worst facilities. That’s not easy to do.
His first season at the Jersey City school wasn’t great, a 10-22 campaign. Similar to his first year at Seton Hall, a 17-16 season and NIT berth. There were obviously adjustments Holloway had to make as a head coach in the Big East for the first time.
The reaction to that underwhelming year, and an offseason that wasn’t impressive on paper, set very low expectations from the outside for Seton Hall. There were no splash additions, although Bediako certainly was one in hindsight.
“I don’t think anyone in the country recruits better to fit their program than Shaheen Holloway and Seton Hall,” St. John’s associate head coach Steve Masiello said after Seton Hall whipped the Johnnies by 15 last Tuesday.
That has seemed to work in Holloway’s favor. His players have used it as ammunition. It has given this team an edge, an edge that has become the Pirates’ identity. They are physical and tough, together and determined. Relentlessly aggressive. The kind of team you don’t want to see in March.
Perhaps the most impressive part of the job that Holloway — the early Big East Coach of the Year favorite — has done is the uptick in production he’s gotten from his core seniors like Richmond, Dawes, Davis and Bediako. All are either having the best seasons of their careers or close to it. That speaks to player development and coaching, especially when you consider Richmond, Dawes and Davis were together last year, and didn’t come close to performing like this.
When Holloway guided Saint Peter’s to the Elite Eight, beating Kentucky, Murray State and Purdue in the process, he was seen as a rising star in the industry. Nearly two years later, that remains the case. This Seton Hall season very few people saw coming is a pretty good example of that.
Storm shudders
Sunday was a bad day for fans of court-storming. There were two different incidents caught on camera. An Ohio State fan ran into Iowa superstar Caitlin Clark, violently knocking her to the floor, and a Tulane fan pushed Memphis wing David Jones from behind. Fortunately, Clark wasn’t injured, Iowa announced, and Jones didn’t retaliate. But next time, it could be worse. Next time, there could be a major injury or a brawl.
Something has to be done to protect players — and that includes barring these postgame traditions, especially if stuff like this continues to happen. Someone’s season, or possibly career, is going to get ruined eventually.