Pirates Tip Off 2023-24 Campaign With Exhibition At NJIT - Seton Hall University Athletics
The 2023-24 Seton Hall men's basketball season will tip off on Saturday at 4 p.m. with a charity exhibition against intra-county foe NJIT at the Wellness & E...
Pirates Tip Off 2023-24 Campaign With Exhibition At NJIT
South Orange, N.J. — The 2023-24 Seton Hall men's basketball season will tip off on Saturday at 4 p.m. with a charity exhibition against intra-county foe NJIT at the Wellness & Events Center in Newark.
All proceeds from the exhibition will go to Team Walker, a non-profit based in Jersey City that offers vital after school programming for the city's youth. Team Walker founder and CEO is Seton Hall Athletics Hall of Famer Jerry Walker '03, a former men's basketball student-athlete who scored 1,075 career points and played on three NCAA Tournament teams in his four-year career at The Hall.
Game Information
Saturday's game will not be televised. 89.5 WSOU, Seton Hall's student radio station, will broadcast the exhibition on its airwaves. Visit www.NJITtix.com to purchase tickets to the game. Tickets will also be available on gameday at the NJIT ticket office, which can be found upon entering the Wellness & Events Center at the Northeast corner of Warren and Lock Street.
NJIT is offering two different ticket options for the event. Fans will have the option of purchasing a $20 premium seat, which is general admission in the three "sideline" sections across from the team benches. The other ticket option is $15 and is general admission in the rest of the lower bowl.
Gates will open at 3 p.m. on October 28 and both general admission options are first come, first serve.
Fans can park at the STPG Parking Deck located at 42 Wilsey Street, which is a short, one block walk to/from the WEC. There is also metered parking right outside the WEC on both Warren and Lock streets and free street parking as you get closer to the garage.
Pirates Helping Pirates
- Saturday's game features two Seton Hall alums coaching against one another in Seton Hall's Shaheen Holloway '00 and NJIT's Grant Billmeier '07.
- Both teams are playing for Team Walker, founded by Seton Hall alum and former men's basketball student-athlete Jerry Walker '03.
- Seton Hall has five alumni (Holloway; Billmeier; Dan Hurley, UConn; Levell Sanders, Binghamton; Donald Copeland, Wagner) serving as head coaches in Division I men's college basketball, the second most in the country behind Duke, which has six alumni head coaches.
- Despite Seton Hall's preseason placement of ninth in the 11-team BIG EAST, the Pirates have traditionally been underrated by the league's coaches when it comes to the preseason poll.
- In the previous 43 polls, Seton Hall has finished higher than its predicted finish 21 times, which is 49 percent of all the polls.
- The Pirates have met their preseason prediction 12 times (28%) and have finished below their preseason prediction just twice since the league reconfigured in 2013-14.
| Year | Preseason Rank | Actual Finish |
|---|---|---|
| 2023-24 | 9th | ? |
| 2022-23 | 7th | T-6th |
| 2021-22 | 5th | T-5th |
| 2020-21 | 5th | T-4th |
| 2019-20 | 1st | T-1st |
| 2018-19 | 8th | T-3rd |
| 2017-18 | 2nd | T-3rd |
| 2016-17 | T-4th | T-3rd |
| 2015-16 | 7th | 3rd |
| 2014-15 | 6th | T-7th |
| 2013-14 | 8th | 8th |
The Three Musketeers
- Head coach Shaheen Holloway has said repeatedly in the preseason that there are four Pirates who cannot have a bad practice; Dre Davis, Al-Amir Dawes, Kadary Richmond and himself.
- Holloway named the trio team captains this season and they will be the ones that will set the tone for the 2023-24 Seton Hall Pirates. The biggest key in the case of Davis and Richmond? Health.
- Both were hindered by injuries for long stretches last season. The Pirates were without either Davis or Richmond in 15 games last season, which made up for 45 percent of The Hall's contests in 2022-23. Seton Hall was 11-7 last season in games where Richmond and Davis were both available.
- In his first season playing back in his home state, Dawes led the Pirates in scoring with 12.6 points per game while shooting 38 percent from deep and 82 percent from the free-throw line.
- After playing all of last season with one true big man in Tyrese Samuel, head coach Shaheen Holloway went out and added three transfers and one European prospect whose collective average height is 6-10; Austin Peay transfer Elijah Hutchins-Everett (6-11), Boise State transfer Sadraque NgaNga (6-10), Santa Clara transfer Jaden Bediako (6-10) and Turkish freshman Arda Ozdogan (6-10).
- NgaNga, a former top 50 prospect coming out of prep school, is comfortable on the wing and at the four spot while Bediako and Ozdogan are natural centers.
- A native of Orange, N.J. and the Ohio Valley Conference Freshman of the Year in 2021-22, Hutchins-Everett has the ability to pop out and shoot from three-point range along with playing with his back to the basket.
