PirateCrew: Seton Hall Pirates Football & Basketball Recruiting
The definitive source for all PirateCrew news.
By JP Pelzman
When Tony Bozzella stamps his foot for the first time during Seton Hall’s home opener to protest a call, at least his toes and his arch will get some relief.
That's because the hardwood court at Walsh Gymnasium has been completely redone with padding underneath, part of the renovation expected to be finished by early September. It's a project drawing rave reviews from many people at Seton Hall, including the longtime head women’s basketball coach.
“I love the floor. The two-tone color is great,” Bozzella told PirateCrew.com in an exclusive interview. For the record, he said it is a dark tan and a light tan.
“Kevin Sponzo has done a wonderful job,” Bozzella added, referring to Seton Hall’s senior associate athletics director for facilities and operations. “He has great visions for things. It looks awesome. I never thought it could look this good, because I don’t have that vision.
“I know I'm not allowed but they let me in,” he added with a laugh. “It was the first time I've seen the floor, the chairs are amazing, just how it’s configured. I think Kevin did a great job with the builders of keeping the old-school feeling but really making it modern as well.”
Bozzella noted that the color scheme of the hardwood court “makes it look really similar to the floor at The Rock. It's a really beautiful looking floor and we were told by the contractors that we have one of the best floors in the country because it’s an NBA-type floor with the padding underneath. (Athletic director) Bryan Felt and Kevin deserve a lot of credit for that because they really pushed for it to be the best it could be."
Spectators also will have more comfort, with all of the old seats being replaced with new ones, plus the court-level, old-style bleacher seating being supplanted by chairs with seatbacks.
“We have such great fans,” Bozzella said. “We have a great following, we have a great league schedule, obviously.”
“We’ll have a new scoreboard. We’ll have the dance team, the cheerleaders and the band back. And the fans will still be on top of the action, they’ll just be more comfortable.”
Bozzella said the Pirates have a non-conference home game scheduled against Fordham and are working hard to get a home game against a Power Five team.
Eventually, the plan will be to move men’s basketball to its own practice facility, which will pave the way for Bozzella and his team to have new offices and a new locker room.
“When we do that,” he said, “I think we will have the best facilities of anyone in the Big East. That’s where (executive vice president and chief of staff) Pat Lyons and Bryan Felt and Kevin Sponzo, their creativity will come into play and I'm sure it will be great.”
Bozzella is very much looking forward to the 2021-22 season after a difficult campaign. Even though the Pirates finished third in the Big East with a 12-5 conference record, The Hall, as did many teams in both women’s and men’s basketball, endured a stop-and-start schedule because of COVID. Worse yet, Bozzella was hospitalized because of a particularly bad case, and still is bothered by lingering effects, such as shortness of breath and fatigue.
He said his daughter signed him up for a COVID “long haulers” group at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, where he was treated last year, and he periodically is tested for various symptoms, one of which is potential memory loss.
“Thankfully, I don’t have that,” he said. “I've been through every type of test you can imagine, all because of COVID. I feel more tired than usual, but I'm getting a lot better, I feel a lot better. So that’s a big step in the right direction.”
Thus, he is very upbeat as the season approaches. He was able to go on the recruiting trail, and believes the Pirates are “in close with two top 100 players.”
Various reports say that The Hall has secured a verbal commitment from Shailyn Pinkney, a point guard from East Hartford who won the Gatorade Award as the Player of the Year in Connecticut for the 2020-21 season. She will be an incoming freshman for 2022-23.
The Pirates had some staff turnover in the off-season. Longtime trusted assistant Lauren DeFalco was promoted to associate head coach. Coordinator of basketball operations Ka-Deidre Simmons, a member of Seton Hall’s Hall of Fame who scored 1,717 points a Pirate, left in May to become a full assistant at St. Bonaventure.
“It’s a great opportunity for her,” Bozzella said.
Shaaliyah Lyons, formerly The Hall’s director of basketball operations, left to take a similar position at Hofstra. She was replaced by former Pirate player Shakena Richardson, whom Bozzella called, “an amazing person.”
About the upcoming season, Bozzella says, “We have a chance to be really good.”
The Pirates will return point guard Lauren Park-Lane (17.5 ppg, 5.4 assists) and leading scorer Andra Espinoza-Hunter (18.6), both All-Big East first-team selections. The Pirates are petitioning the NCAA for an extra year of eligibility in 2022-23 for Espinoza-Hunter, a Mississippi State transfer who played in only seven games for Connecticut in 2017-18.
A third returning double-digit scorer is junior guard Mya Jackson (10.6), who has been named team captain.
Bozzella said, “Mya has performed above and beyond both on and off the court for Seton Hall,” adding that she has led both prayer groups and motivational groups and is the “first one out for practice last one off the court after practice. She's a tremendous student. She epitomizes the student-athlete and she’s well-liked by everyone, and all those things factored together. … Eventually we may add one or two other captains, but she clearly deserved it and earned it as of now because of all of those factors.”
Bozzella also noted that Jackson is active in the community and a supporter of all athletics at Seton Hall.
“She's just a great ambassador for the program,” he said.
Bozzella also hopes Curtessia Dean can be a contributor. The junior-college transfer sat out 2020-21 with an Achilles’ injury.
Further, Bozzella is happy with the incoming transfers.
“We did pretty well” in the transfer market, he said. “Sidney Cooks has a chance to be special. She was rated the No. 5 player in the country coming out of the 2017 high school class and we’ll have her for two years.
She's a 6-4 kid who can shoot the three. She's a special talent.”
Bozzella feels that Cooks, a graduate transfer who averaged 6.1 points for Mississippi State, still has untapped potential.
“We've had a lot of success with players like that,” he said, noting she still is finishing up some work at Mississippi State and will arrive in South Orange in a few weeks.
Katie Armstrong, formerly of Fairfield, was All-MAAC second-team each of the last two seasons. “She has a great chance to start and play major minutes for us,” Bozzella said.
West Virginia transfer Ariel Cummings “can do a lot of good things,” the coach added. Cummings appeared in only nine games for the Mountaineers last season after starring in junior college.
Bozzella said that, with the new, more-lenient transfer rules, “I'd rather have a kid come in here who’s college-ready. With the new rule, if we bring in a kid and we’re just trying to develop her, and she doesn’t play very much, she’s going to leave. It's made a huge impact.”
He noted how legendary Duke men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski has said, “If you don’t adapt to change, then you’re going to be left behind.”
Bozzella said, “I would much rather have three freshmen, three sophomore, three juniors and three seniors, of course, but we understand the landscape right now.”
One advantage, as opposed to last year at this time, has been to have student-athletes on campus earlier and thus get a jump on the season.
“It means everything,”
“We've been able to put a lot of our offense in, and we’ve been able to stress the speed of how we play, so I'm excited for that.”
For now, they’ve been practicing in the basement gym the men’s team usually practices in.
“We have such a great relationship with Kevin (Willard). He's fantastic,” Bozzella said. “I love watching their practices.
He said it’s also been emotionally beneficial for the players in terms of “just having people you can go see, student services, student advisors, having more normalcy back in their lives.”
Besides the Walsh Gym renovation, he is excited about the rest of the construction on the Seton Hall campus.
“The Student Center is going to be awesome,” Bozzella said. “We have a great visionary in our president, Dr. (Joseph) Nyre. He wants the best for our student-athletes and our students in general. He's not going to spare any expense.”
Besides the new transfer rules, Bozzella and his staff also are dealing with the brave new world of Name, Image and Likeness rules, and their immediate effect on college sports.
“We're trying to do a lot of education on it,” he said. “I think we can benefit from it, I do, in the (geographic) area that we’re in. We have one of the top women’s basketball programs in the state and I think we have the best one. Rutgers might argue, but they’re the ones that don’t want to play us.
“In terms of community service, we never say no to anything, we do every single event we’re asked to do.”
He added that, in terms of NIL, “Why not come to the biggest metropolitan area in the country?"
In short, as Bozzella's mantra has been, 'Why Not Seton Hall'?
