PREVIEW
The Pirates host the Seton Hall Invitational this weekend, inviting three teams, Akron, Iona and George Mason to South Orange. The Hall will face George Mason on Friday at 7:00 p.m. On Saturday, it'll take on Akron at 12:30 p.m., followed by Iona at 7:00 p.m.

TOURNAMENT SCHEDULE
Friday, September 2
Akron vs. Iona – 4:30 p.m.
George Mason at SETON HALL – 7:00 p.m.

Saturday, September 3
Iona vs. George Mason – 10:00 a.m.
Akron at SETON HALL – 12:30 p.m.
George Mason vs. Akron – 4:30 p.m.
Iona at SETON HALL – 7:00 p.m.

MEDIA
All three of Seton Hall's matches this weekend will be streamed live by the Pirate Sports Network and shown on FloSports. WSOU FM will also cover each of Seton Hall's contests. All six matches will be available via Live Stats. The non-Seton Hall matches will not be streamed.

LAST WEEK
Seton Hall opened the 2022 season in successful fashion last weekend, winning the Temple Invitational with victories against host Temple and Delaware. Sophomore Maddie Klungel (Napa, Calif.) was named Most Valuable Player of the tournament, while Perri Lucas (Chicago, Ill.) and Jenna Walsh (Foothill Ranch, Calif.) earned All-Tournament Team honors.

Most recently, the Pirates suffered their first loss of the new campaign, a four-set setback to Hofstra on Tuesday. Seton Hall had more kills and more digs than the Pride, but Hofstra's defense up front proved difficult for the Pirates. Hofstra had 11.0 team blocks in the contest and The Hall committed 30 attack errors.

Walsh finished with 13 kills and five digs, while Klungel continued her strong start to the season, finishing with 26 assists, seven digs and four kills.

The Hall enters this weekend with a 2-1 record.

SCOUTING AKRON
Seton Hall and Akron are meeting for the five time in history, with the Zips having won the prior four meetings. Akron swept the teams' most recent gathering at the Akron Invitational on Sept. 14, 2019.

The Zips are coming off a 10-20 season in 2021. They played one BIG EAST opponent, DePaul, and defeated them in Chicago in five sets on Sept. 10.

This year, the Zips were picked to finish sixth in the six-team MAC East Division. Akron enters this weekend with an 0-3 record, but two of those losses came in five sets. They opened the season with the Butler Invitational and were swept by Eastern Illinois. The Zips then lost in five sets to Oakland and host Butler.

Teagan Ochaya leads Akron with 2.77 kills per set. Faith Johnson is a close second with 2.62 kills per set.

SCOUTING IONA
Seton Hall has never lost to Iona in 12 all-time meetings. In fact, the Pirates own a 36-1 set record against the Gaels all-time. These teams met as recent as last year when the Pirates swept the Gaels at the Big Apple Tournament, hosted by Columbia, on Sept. 10, 2021.

Iona is coming off a 10-18 record in 2021 and saw its season end with a first-round loss to Rider in the MAAC Championship. In addition to the Pirates, the Gaels played one other BIG EAST school last year, falling to Providence in four sets on Aug. 28.

This season, Iona is picked to finish in sixth place of the 10-team MAAC, according to the Preseason Coaches' Poll. However, unlike Akron, which has started this season 0-3, the Gaels find themselves 3-0 after the first weekend. Iona hosted a tournament and defeated Providence and Holy Cross in four sets before sweeping Central Connecticut State.

After three matches, Iona leads the MAAC in most offensive categories including kills per set, hitting percentage and opponent hitting percentage. Greta Stjade leads the Gaels and ranks fourth in the MAAC with 3.18 kills per set. Hope Matschner leads the MAAC with a remarkable 8.09 digs per set.

SCOUTING GEORGE MASON
Seton Hall and George Mason have only met three prior times in history with the Pirates winning two of those matchups. Most recently, The Hall defeated the Patriots in four sets at the George Mason Invitational on Sept. 21, 2019 in Fairfax, Va.

The Patriots are coming off a rough 5-21 campaign in 2021. They won just three of 16 Atlantic 10 Conference contests and finished the season with a six-match losing streak.

This season, George Mason was picked to finish 10th in the 10-team Atlantic 10. New head coach Megan Shifflett will be tasked with turning around the Patriots fortunes moving forward. So far in 2021, George Mason is 1-2 after last weekend's contests. George Mason opened the season with a four-set loss to Howard, followed by getting swept by American. They enter the weekend, however, coming off a victory, a five-set win against New Orleans on Saturday.

Olyvia Kennedy leads the Patriots with 3.17 kills per set.

UP NEXT
After the Seton Hall Invitational, the Pirates will return to the road for three matches at the Sacred Heart Invitational in Fairfield, Conn. The Hall will face host Sacred Heart on Saturday, before taking on Stony Brook and Princeton on Sunday.

Jay Gomes High on Holloway​

By Colin Rajala

................Trove: It was a really fun run, relevance means a heck of a lot when the program and fan base hadn’t seen a tournament since 2006. The Willard era really took off after the top recruiting class of Isaiah Whitehead, Khadeen Carrington, Angel Delgado, Desi Rodriguez and Ish Sanogo and I think a lot of that has to do with the relationships that Shaheen Holloway helped build and develop. Now, you have obviously had a chance to cover Shaheen since high school, how do you view his career from being a top recruit, to leading the Pirates to the Sweet 16, to securing a transcendent recruiting class and of course the recent Elite Eight run before returning to his alma mater?

Gomes: I’ve been lucky enough to cover Shaheen’s career since the summer going into his freshman year. As a player, and I've said this to many people over the years, he was probably the most dominant player I've seen in my 30 years of covering New Jersey. He dominated every game. He was just so good, so smart, so competitive. Just looking at their high school careers and their AAU careers and their summer careers, he’s up there with the likes of Kyrie Irving, Karl Anthony Towns, Dajuan Wagner or any of the other greatest players in the history of New Jersey basketball. I followed him throughout his career and I remember being at the press conference when he got hired as St. Peter's head coach and I was amazed at the progress that he made in his career. Just remembering him as a player, he was so polished and poised, but as a coach he was more polished than expected and his poise as a coach came through his personality where he grew up to be a man that's a leader of men. I was very much just really blown away by how far he had come. Now, I thought he would do a good job at St. Peter’s, most people did, but no one thought he would have the type of success he had in a few short years. It's more of a credit to him that he long believed in himself and his team but he got the guys to believe in themselves. That belief propelled them past all of the big boys and onto a run for the ages.



Trove: Knowing the list of greats to have played the sport through the years, it really means something to be in that upper echelon of names. It just points to the stature and importance he has had carrying the torch for the tri-state area and passing it on to so many guys.

Gomes: I think that will help in his recruiting a little bit. He’s been in and walked in those shoes of the young kids nowadays. He knows the pitfalls and he avoided them all as a player in college, in the pros overseas and now as a coach. He’s done everything the right way and I think he really uses that well when he's communicating with the kids. He gets kids that he sees have their head in the right place and are dedicated to the game like he was. It will help at Seton Hall.

I know it’s very early but here’s what I’m seeing.
1. Nobody’s job is safe nor should it be.
2. Guys who have been stinking up the joint no matter how much they are making may need a new team.
3. Guys catching balls and scoring TD’s. wow what a concept. I don’t care whose name is on the back of the Jersey if they can score.
4. Webb is putting Jones on notice. I know he was not playing against the first team but the guy gets rid of the ball and wants to win the game. If Jones doesn’t wake up Webb will be playing this year maybe sooner than we think.
5. Feel like we have some players ready to jump in and make some plays. Opportunity opens the door for success.
6. Most years winning preseason games is no big deal but for the current Giants need to see what winning feels like.

Cautiously optimistic right now that maybe the mindset on the team is changing.

Another swing and a miss.

Nice to see that the staff has Hubbard on campus but, I am very, very surprised the staff is having problems gaining traction with recruits.

NFL info

NFL VALUATIONS (Per Sportico)​

Make Attorneys Get Attorneys

Check out the Netflix documentary "Untold" series on Manti Te'o "girlfriend who didn't exist". I must admit when news first broke 10 years ago I thought Manti was either complicit or a complete moron. The film does good job laying out the details and with this context and interviews with all the key parties, you really feel sorry for how much crap Manti had to take. His attitude even now is inspirational.

Why Ric Flair faked a heart attack in front of daughter in final match​

By Ryan Glasspiegel

The dirtiest player in the game faked a heart attack in front of his own daughter.

Ric Flair was taking part in his final wrestling match in Nashville on July 31. His son-in-law Conrad Thompson, the podcast magnate who also promoted the event, would later reveal that he “begged” Flair before the match not to do a fake heart attack spot. Nevertheless, Flair explained to The Post he felt it was necessary to preserve the pacing to the finish as he was suffering dehydration.

“I made the mistake of saying to someone in the match that I felt lightheaded, so everybody jumped way too early [toward the finish of the match], and I just said [in my head] that this was the only way to slow it down,” Flair said.

Flair has stared death in the face twice. The first time, in 1975, he was on a plane that crashed. The pilot died, and Flair suffered a broken back.


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At that point, however, Flair wasn’t thinking about death. He was worried about what would happen if he couldn’t wrestle again.

“The other one was 10 times more serious,” he said.

“The other one” was a multi-year saga. Flair had an intestinal blockage in 2015. He had an emergency appendectomy. He tried to walk out of the hospital that day.

“I was determined not to be checked in. I hate hospitals,” Flair said. “I got up, took the needles out of my arm. It was no big deal — I’ve done that before. But when I was walking out the door I got a hernia.”

During the hernia surgery, they nicked his bowel. This meant his third surgery in 11 days, the final one involving a long recovery process.



Ric Flair talks to Tony Schiavone after his final match.
STARRCAST


He then had what he said doctors told him was a “one in a million” occurrence of the bowel issues flaring back up, in 2019 — and it had a devastating effect.

“I was septic — they couldn’t operate on me for 48 hours,” Flair said. “I was in such pain that they put me on life support and they kept me on it for 14 days. For 31 days in ICU, I couldn’t walk. I had no memory. I couldn’t even open a can of Diet Coke. With 31 more days of rehab, learning how to walk again, I finally headed home.”

During the time in which he thought he might die, he called everybody he cared about, including those he might have had “beef” with, and told them how much he loved them.

It took two years after leaving the hospital for him to be what he considered “halfway normal.” A year and change after that, he wrestled, at the age of 73.

While the match was critically acclaimed — justifiably graded on a curve — Flair feels that his performance lagged due to dehydration he suffered, and he did not get closure from it.

Flair is a perfectionist about accomplishing the goals he sets for himself. For example, he was “fixated” on dropping nearly 30 pounds to get down to 218, and did it.

The Nature Boy — whose cannabis collaboration with Mike Tyson’s “Tyson 2.0” launches in October — had a few beers out in Nashville the night before, but he went to bed early. He woke up before dawn, had egg whites and coffee, and didn’t eat anything else the rest of the day. This, combined with the performance anxiety he had about performing in front of 9,000 people, led him to be dehydrated.

“I just ran out of fluid,” Flair said. “I didn’t get tired or anything. I was doing 500 free squats in 12 minutes. Find someone my age who can do that, or what I was doing on the stationary bike. Even 50.”

The dehydration caused Flair to get “lost” during the match. This brings us to the fake heart attack right in front of his daughter Megan, which Flair wants to set the record straight about — it was an audible on his part, not a scripted part of the match.

“I did that on my own,” Flair said. “I told the referee [to tell] Jeff Jarrett to slow down. Boom, bring it back down and lay the rest of the match out. And we did that. That was an audible to get everybody back on the same track — slow down, I’m fine. It was not the plan. It was not in good taste. I realize that. It was the only thing that was going to keep everybody from going right to the finish.”

Colin Rajala is writing a long detailed 3 part interview with Rivals national recruiting expert Rob Cassidy for the Trove.

I am only going to bring one tidbit here from the 3 parter......

..............Trove: Exactly. Now, it seems like Holloway is going to continue his approach of having multiple ballhandlers on the floor at the same time and having his guys play as hard as possible until they can’t play at his level before subbing them out for some fresh legs. With that type of style, you need depth and it seems like the staff has been involved with a lot of guards and wings. One of the first names that comes to my mind is Aaron Clark. He was a guy that seemed like a strong SHU-lean back when Willard was recruiting him and it doesn’t seem like much has changed in terms of his interest in attending Seton Hall. What do you think about his game and his chances of wearing Pirate Blue one day?

Cassidy: I like Aaron’s game a lot. He can do a lot for a team; he handles the ball really well. He's turned into a better shooter. He's not going to shoot the lights out of the gym, but he’s a guy you don’t want to give too much space too. Maybe the most important thing with him is if they do land him, and I think they have a good chance, is he plays with the NJ Scholars program. They are loaded, D.J. Wagner plays for them and Mackenzie Mgbako and some other high-end guys. There is something to that program where if you can get in there with a guy like Clark now, then the success does follow and then the next thing you know you’re in play for some of these dudes in the 2025 class that they have coming up, which is absolutely loaded.

Basketball recruiting works more like that than football recruiting does. You know how it is, it's shoe company dominated and then its dominated by relationships, both player and coach relationships and player and player relationships. Aaron is kind of a bell cow, in a sense, at a place like that. You get a guy like him in the fold and the next thing you know it kind of compounds.

For those that want to donate send your checks to

ProCamps
SHU PLAYER'S CAMP
Attn Andy Danner
4600 McAuley Place
4th Floor
Cincinnati, OH 45242

That's all you have to do if you do not want to make the contribution tax deductible. AND MAKE SURE YOU NOTE SHU PLAYER'S CAMP on the check.

From JP's second of a 3 part interview with John Fanta


JPP: What does he need to be successful in his first season back at The Hall?

JF: So what he needs to do is, first and foremost, he needs to stay true to himself, which I don’t think he’s going to have any issues doing.

In a way, this is like getting promoted to a different job. Sometimes when you have dinner with the boss, you clean yourself up a little bit more, you’re a little tighter than you would be just grabbing a cocktail with your colleagues. He's got to be true to himself and I have full confidence that he will be. But you don’t want to walk onto this stage and try to be somebody that you weren’t at Saint Peter’s. I don’t think that’s going to be the case.

Fans can get caught up in the buzz, the hype machine. I don’t think he gets rattled by that or else he wouldn’t have made it to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament.

What does this team need to do? They've got to find a way to mesh. They've got to get enough guard play. Now, Kadary Richmond was a roller-coaster ride last season, but when he was at his best, like he was down the stretch at Xavier last season, like he was against UConn at home, he can be an elite guard. Because his handle, his ability to make things happen for others is as good as anybody in the Big East in terms of creativity. He's such a creative player.

This is a team that needs to see guys increase their efficiency level, increase their consistency level. Tyrese Samuel, can he package his best together? Tray Jackson, what does he do this season? Is he a guy that shows up once every three or four games? This is a team that needs transfers to provide scoring and physicality. Somebody asked me if KC Ndefo can play in the Big East? Yes, because KC Ndefo is not afraid. He's got to help in the physicality department.

I think Femi Odukale from Pitt ...........................

​

Just taking a pulse here. Sometimes I wonder if what I think is in the majority on this site, hard to tell sometimes with an often passionate but too loud of a minority.

Simple question: Who won the 2020 Presidential Election?

Now that the dust has mostly settled, here's how I see the BE in tiers. I don't really see the BE being much of a national player (I only see Creighton as Top 25 pre-season) but inside the conference has gotten tougher.

My take on the BE next season (tiers in alphabetical order):

Tier 1 = Creighton

Tier 2 = Providence, Seton Hall, Villanova, Xavier, UCONN

Tier 3 = Butler, DePaul, Georgetown, Marquette. St. John's

Yesterday was not a press conference. It was more like a coronation. Shaheen Holloway, Seton Hall's favorite son, or like Kevin Marino said on the dais the "Real Deal" has come home.

I have been to many of these press conferences, with one being Kevin Willard's. That was was almost antiseptic. Boring with polite applause at times.

Not yesterday. the setting was almost electric. 7 standing ovations for Sha as he spoke. How do I know? Well Harty9, tact and I sat in the media area (snuck them in) and right next to us was Bruce Beck who was counting and just as impressed as everyone else in the gym.

I have not yet seen the video, but I hope in some small way it captured the emotions of the event.

In short I expected a lot. But not the overwhelming love that permeated Walsh all day long.

Odd and ends to follow

What is going on up there?

The Freedom Convoy has been a peaceful protest with only a handful of minor arrests (one of which was a driver trying to stop police from taking fuel off his truck). No one is burning down or vandalizing buildings, looting, attacking citizens, etc. Somehow Trudeau is trying to blame this on the U.S. since it was reported that someone was waving a Confederate Flag.. What does that flag even mean to a Canadian? They are calling on Child Welfare to investigate the number of children that are in the cabs of some of the trucks....like maybe it's the truckers family??? Now Trudeau wants to put guidelines on social media communication. I'm sure he'll blame Trump pretty soon.

Looks like a peaceful protest of government over-reach. Stopping traffic and beeping their horns non-stop...Oh, the humanity!!! Even the peaceful Canadians are fed up with it.

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Before Seton Hall and Big East foe Xavier do battle in a conference matchup, Charlie DiSturco of The Action Network is here to give you his best bet (video above).

The Musketeers enter Wednesday night’s matchup in fifth place in the conference while the Pirates arrive in seventh place only a game behind Xavier.

But DiSturco believes Seton Hall to be a worthy favorite at home and is targeting its spread (-3) for the contest.

“Xavier has struggled of late,” DiSturco says. “This is a team that has constantly found itself in big holes in the first half and [are] forced to claw themselves back in the second.”

On the flip-side, Seton Hall possesses a top-20 two-point defense and has the size down low to give the Musketeers problems.

DiSturco believes the presence of Ike Obiagu, who averages nearly three blocks a game, will help limit Xavier’s offense and give the Pirates a much-needed win to increase their chances at a NCAA Tournament bid.

Rutgers hasn’t played in the NCAA tournament since Joe Biden was in his 40’s and he may be in his 80’s by the time they get there. Lesson to RU fans, heed the advice of that great philosopher, Ralph Kramden, “Be nice to the people you meet on the way up, because you’re going to meet the same people on the way down”.