PirateCrew: Seton Hall Pirates Football & Basketball Recruiting
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Not since he was a Seton Hall sophomore had Myles Cale scored 20 points in a game. Until Wednesday night, that is.
Well, in a manner of speaking, he still hasn’t. Because Cale went straight past the 20s and wound up with a career-high 30 in a 78-67 Seton Hall victory over Georgetown at the Prudential Center that wasn’t nearly as close as that score might indicate.
The victory erased some of the bitter taste of the controversial overtime loss to Providence three nights earlier and enabled the Pirates (6-4, 3-1 Big East) to go into Christmas with a much-needed victory. Coach Kevin Willard said afterward he was giving his players the next three days off after they had played those 10 games in a span of 27 days amidst both heavy travel and COVID-19 testing protocols.
“I just had the hot hand,” said Cale, who finished 10-for-16 from the floor and 5-for-9 from three-point range. “My teammates did a good job and kept feeding me.”
However, as Willard pointed out, Cale only was 1-for-5 on threes in the first half. But instead of backing off, as Cale might have in the past, he adopted the attitude of another guy named Myles who wore a Seton Hall uniform.
“What I liked about Myles tonight was that he stayed aggressive,” Willard said. “I think last year, going 1-for-5, he would’ve gotten a little gun-shy and this year, he’s still coming out, and he’s being aggressive and he’s trying to make things happen. I think that’s where you’re seeing a senior kind of get some confidence in the fact that if he stays aggressive, good things will happen.”
Jared Rhoden also was hot from beyond the arc, pumping in 26 points and going 3-for-7 from long distance. Seton Hall needed all of that production because leading scorer Sandro Mamukelashvili was limited to 25 minutes because of first-half foul trouble and finished with only two points.
“Teams scout Sandro so well because of the games he’s had,” Cale said, “so it’s on us to pick him up.”
Besides Cale’s career game, the most encouraging sign Wednesday night was the Seton Hall-high 22 minutes played by grad transfer point guard Bryce Aiken. Although he shot 1-for-9, and 0-for-5 from long distance, Aiken was moving better than he had recently, flashing not only his quickness but his trademark ballhandling skills. He finished with a game-high six assists to go with five from Shavar Reynolds and four from Rhoden.
“It was great to get Bryce out there for as many minutes as he had,” Willard said. “The last two days (practice and the game) have given me tremendous confidence in Bryce from a standpoint of getting into a rhythm and finding a rhythm. His ankle looks good. His knee looks good. Right now, I think he just needs some more game shots.
“His shot’s great,” Willard added. ‘It's just a matter of getting him some game reps. We could do an individual workout all day long but you get into a game and your heart rate starts beating a little bit different, the defense is a little bit different. (But) I think he’s really starting to trend to a good spot. I'm really excited about where he is.”
“I’ve seen Bryce make 10 shots from behind the NBA (three-point line) in practice,” Rhoden said.
As for the game itself, Georgetown's offense was atrocious in the first half. Much of that had to do with the Pirates’ defense, which prevented the Hoyas (3-5, 1-3) from finding open shots, and funneled them into Ike Obiagu, who recorded nine of his 10 blocked shots before intermission. But some of the blame lay with Georgetown’s shooters, who bricked almost all of the clean looks at the basket that they were afforded.
Still, it took awhile for the Pirates to pull away. The Hall was stuck at the 17-point mark for a 4:20 span during the first half after taking a 12-point lead on Tyrese Samuel’s three-pointer off a pass from Aiken, who subbed in 3:04 into the game and had five first-half assists. But the Pirates didn’t score again until a Cale trey at the 8:34 mark for a 20-7 lead.
It hardly mattered, however, because during that span, Georgetown tallied only once, on Chudier Bile’s jumper. The Hoyas missed 16 of their first 18 field-goal attempts and heated up only slightly the rest of the half, making six of 18 the rest of the way to trail 33-19.
Thus, the second half was mostly a formality, as the Pirates could happily look ahead to a Christmas break before their next scheduled game at Xavier on Dec. 30.
