PirateCrew: Seton Hall Pirates Football & Basketball Recruiting
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By Zack Cziryak
The wheels were coming off the bus for the Seton Hall Pirates on New Year’s Eve against cross-river rival St. John’s, until suddenly they weren’t.
The Hall was down 10 points in the first half in a season beginning to run away from Shaheen Holloway in his inaugural year as the head coach of his alma mater. However, the Pirates used a late first half surge to take a 5-point lead into the intermission before routing the Johnnies to the tune of 88-66 at the Prudential Center on Saturday afternoon.
Al-Amir Dawes turned in his best performance of the season, tying a career high and leading the Pirates with 22 points to go along with 3 assists and 3 rebounds. Dawes, who hit his first two attempts from deep before missing the next 3, finished the night on 8-14 shooting overall and 5-10 from beyond the arc.
Joel Soriano paced the Red Storm, finishing with 23 points and 11 rebounds on 10-14 shooting, though he was noticeably slowed down by a stingy Pirate defense as the game progressed after finishing the first half with 17 point and 8 rebounds. Andre Curbelo added 10 points and 7 assists and David Jones notched 12 points and 8 rebounds, both off the bench.
Kadary Richmond, as he has of late, stuffed the stat sheet by tallying 19 points, 9 rebounds and 6 assists to a single turnover, joining Tyrese Samuel, 16, and Dre Davis, 14, as the double-digit Seton Hall scorers.
Both teams looked ugly early, with the first points of the game coming on a Dawes 3-pointer. Fast forward to the under 12-minute timeout, when St. John’s capped a 14-3 run with a pick of Dawes at the top of the key leading to a runout dunk from Jones to give the Johnnies an 18-8 edge, their largest lead of the game.
“I told you guys it’s going to be a physical game. Everybody’s reacting to everything they do,” Holloway told his team during an “Inside the Huddle” segment during that timeout.
The Pirates would claw back from there, retaking the team’s first lead since a 6-4 mark at 33-31 on the heels of a Dawes 3-pointer and a 13-2 run. From there the teams would trade punches until a 5-0 Seton Hall run with the score tied at 37 would give the Pirates the halftime advantage, capped by a pull-up 3-pointer from Richmond as time expired.
A 6-0 run to start the second half would push the Pirate lead to 11 at 48-37 and a Richmond floater in transition following a behind the back move would push the Pirate lead to double-digits for the first time at 50-39 with just over 17 minutes to play. St. John’s would never get closer.
The Pirates shot 54.1% from the field and 36.8% from beyond the arc compared to 41.2% and 22.2% for the Johnnies. The Hall also sunk 75% of its 20 free throw attempts, while St. John’s shot 54% from the charity stripe on 9 fewer attempts.
The win improved Seton Hall to 8-7 on the season and notched the squad’s first Big East victory of the year and of Holloway’s career as a head coach in the conference, tying St. John’s which dropped to 11-4 overall and 1-3 in conference.
The Pirates next head to Omaha, Neb. to face the Creighton Bluejays in a Tuesday night matchup scheduled for 8:30 p.m. ET on Fox Sports 1.
