Holloway, St. Peter’s aim for success with a Jersey attitude
The lines for Shaheen Holloway are clearly drawn. And when it came time to assess the local connections to his Saint Peter’s team in the East Regional at the Wells Fargo Center Thursday night, he had an objection.
Yes, there is freshman forward Clarence Rupert, a North Philadelphia native who went to school in Virginia. But Ryan Whalen, the assistant coach who graduated from Saint Joseph’s …
“Ryan’s from Jersey,” Holloway corrected Thursday, about the West Long Branch native.
That definition is as clear as the coach who has led the 15thseeded Peacocks all the way to the Sweet 16, where they take on No. 3 Purdue Friday night. Tipoff is at 7:09, with the collision of blue bloods No. 8 North
Carolina and No. 4 UCLA to follow at 9:39. Both games are on CBS.
Holloway, so intimately identified with New York City basketball, and his team from Jersey City has awakened a long dormant and once glorious city hoops scene. That it’s Holloway at the helm — the Queens-born, Elizabethreared, Seton Hall-graduated guard with all the headiness and snarl of a New York hooper — seems fitting. It’s been 22 years, a figure that took Holloway aback Thursday, since he led No. 10 seed Seton Hall to the Sweet 16, along the way topping a No. 2 seed in Temple in a game that Holloway left in a wheelchair due to an ankle injury.
Holloway now draws on the ample reserves of talent in his backyard and is using them to craft a St. Peter’s team with a blue-collar mentality befitting the Jesuit school with an enrollment of 2,637.
“Typically those are the type of kids I like to recruit, guys that are underrecruited, have a chip on their shoulder with something to prove; tough, hard-nosed kids, tough minded,” Holloway said Thursday. “I’m a coach that really gets after my guys, so you’ve got to be a tough kid and tough minded to play for me.”
“For those who are familiar with New York and Jersey basketball, you always know one thing about them,” forward Hassan Drame said. “They will never back down no matter what the challenge is … and when they were growing up playing basketball they always learned how to challenge when they’re playing.”
Holloway, his unmistakable accent and withering North Jersey glare aside, isn’t a caricature, in the same way his team isn’t just a hasty collection of street savvy players. The Peacocks are a defensefirst group, ranking fifth in the country in field goal percentage defense and 19th in scoring defense. Holloway insists on rotating his roster — 12 players average at least 8.5 minutes per game each — with nine different players who have scored in double-figures in a game this season.
Saint Peter’s is the hottest team in the nation with nine straight victories, with an 18-5 record since a COVID-19 pause that kept them off the court from Dec. 18 to Jan. 14. It’s a multinational group, with players from three African nations and Puerto Rico.
“I’m just impressed with Saint Peter’s,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said. “I’m impressed with how hard they play, how competitive they are. They’ve got guys that come off
the bench that are starters. They’re deep. They’re wellcoached. So we’re going to have our hands full there.”
In his fourth season of his first head-coaching gig, Holloway has Saint Peter’s in the tournament for just the fourth time, getting the Peacocks their first victories. Their last tournament run ended at the hands of … a third-seeded Purdue team, in 2011. Then, it was a first-round game.
Holloway insists this journey isn’t about him. He’s had his time in the spotlight, in his stellar career at Seton Hall after
being one of the top recruits in the country before a European pro career. He’ll garner national acclaim again when it’s time for him to step up to a bigger coaching job.
But this week, Holloway is putting aside the history and the hype to focus on 40 more minutes of basketball.
“I’m the head of the snake,” Holloway said. “I’m here, in practice I’m this and that, but these guys are carrying the mission out to a tee. I don’t think they get enough credit for what they’re doing or what they did.”