PirateCrew: Seton Hall Pirates Football & Basketball Recruiting
The definitive source for all PirateCrew news.
By JP Pelzman
Welcome to part 1 of my Q and A with longtime Seton Hall radio analyst Dave Popkin. in part 1, Dave discusses some of the difficulties of broadcasting during a COVID season and also looks ahead to what’s in store for the revamped Pirates in 2021-22.
J.P. Pelzman: We all have heard how this was the most difficult season ever for the players, coaches, trainers, support staffs and the like. But how tough was it on you and Gary Cohen, especially from a logistical standpoint?
Dave Popkin: There were positives and negatives. For the home games, we were there. We were in the Devils’ (broadcasting) location, atop the first level of seats. It was a great view. We were up there by ourselves, and it was fine. You don’t get a lot of the interaction at the table that is helpful, with the official scorer and the ref, and the trainer and the SID (Thomas Chen), the people that you need for fast-breaking developments during the game. So that was a negative.
And that was a negative with the road games, too, because we were in the studio for all but two of the road and neutral games this season. Gary and I went to Rhode Island and UConn, which was great because we basically were the only media there and got to see the game in person, which is always better. For the other games, we were at WSOU on campus, and we were grateful to them that they let us come and use their studio and basically have the run of the place and send the signal off to AM 970 and SiriusXM from there.
The only bad part of that is when FOX doesn’t cooperate and they join the game late and they have a bad camera angle and you can’t see what’s going on in the game. And then it’s panic time, so that was difficult. There was a St. John’s game where Gary was away (at New York Mets’ spring training) and I was doing play-by-play and they had auto racing on instead of the Seton Hall game so we had to switch over to a phone and a tablet where they had the alternate feed of the game running.
The Learfield IMG people bailed me out and kept handing me devices and I kept calling the game like nothing bad was happening. It was crazy but it worked out fine and I think everybody was adaptive and cooperative.
JPP: How crazy was that, especially considering that game really was not far away. It was in Queens. I remember that. That was insane. It wasn’t even a real NASCAR race, it was like the NASCAR minor leagues or something. And not only did they interview the winner, they stayed there and interviewed the second-place guy until they switched to the game. That was mind-boggling.
DP: (Laughs) I didn’t understand it. And there were a lot of baskets early in that game. It was a frantic pace.
JPP: Yes. (Seton Hall led 18-0 before eventually losing)
DP: Joe DeSantis, who did the game with me that day, literally came over behind my shoulder and we were watching on Ben Derda’s phone. Ben is a salesperson for Learfield IMG and we just called it like it was happening right in front of us.
We were just lucky to get the games in this year. I think it was a miracle that they got the whole season in this year. The fact that they got the NCAA Men’s Tournament in this year saved college sports. The money that they did not get the year before, the mid-majors and the small conferences that rely on that money to operate, they really needed the tournament to happen this year and thank God it did.
JPP: Obviously, you couldn’t get nearly as close as you usually do to the Seton Hall coaches and players. What was your impression of the toll the season and the isolation might have taken on them?
DP: I sensed some fatigue down the stretch and part of it was the depth of the team and relying on the main guys for heavy minutes. But I think it took a mental toll on Seton Hall and other teams. You saw some crazy results and some unexpected things this year because it was a COVID year. I think that it did have an effect on the team even though they didn’t have to miss many games in season, they had a pretty compact season as a result. They lost five of six down the stretch and there were times they looked a little tired.
JPP: Do you think it weighed as much on the coaches as it did on the players, specifically Kevin Willard?
DP: I'm not sure. I think just the nature of some of the results were frustrating for the staff. There were a lot of near-misses. This was a pretty good team. This was a bubble team that missed a couple of key opportunities that could have put it over the top and into the tournament and that weighs on you. The two-point loss at Villanova. The one-point loss at Louisville. Blowing a 16-point lead at home with 11 and a half minutes left against Creighton, those were games that could have helped them in the computer rankings and made them a 7 seed instead of being on the outside looking in.
JPP: That's a fair point.
DP: It was a roller-coaster year and I think everybody was 1--relieved that we got it in, and 2--relieved that it was over.
