https://setonhall.rivals.com/
By Zack Cziryak
What’s more important, the Big East Championship or the regular season or the tournament title?
The Big East Tournament because it's a media spectacle, it’s fun, it’s a tremendous experience cutting down the nets, hoisting the trophy, in the Garden. That’s a bigger deal from an experience and fan perspective, but winning the Big East regular season title is much more significant in my view. It’s much harder to do than to catch fire for three games. It’s recognized as the greater accomplishment by the NCAA Selection Committee every year as you see when it comes to seeding. And any coach will tell you it’s a much bigger accomplishment to win over the course of the season.
When Pat Hobbs hired Steve Pikiell his big rationale was that Stony Brook had won three or four regular season titles. Now as everybody knows they lost in the championship games in the America East a lot. Hobbs’ thing was that it’s so much harder to win the regular season. It shows you so much more about a coach than it does to win three games in a weekend. And I would extrapolate that to say it shows you more about a team to win the regular season that it does to win a tournament. Fans might disagree with me on which is a bigger deal, and that's fine. I’m not going to tell a fan which is more important to them, but if you’re asking me objectively there’s no question that winning the regular season is better.
I know you don’t concentrate on recruiting, but what is your opinions on Seton Hall's three assistant coaches?
First of all I think Grant Billmeier is a fantastic assistant coach. The development of the big guys on his watch has been terrific. Kevin trusts him to work with them and he’s done a great job. He's a good guy and has deep New Jersey roots -- grew up in Pennington, played for Patrick School, played and coached at Seton Hall, coached at FDU -- and that helps. The guy got Mamu. That’s an enormous recruit for the program, that’s his guy. If Seton Hall gets Sanogo, the big guy from Pat’s, he’ll have a big hand in that. He spotted Ro Gill, that was his guy. He found Romaro Gill sitting on the end of a Juco bench and convinced Kevin to go see him. This is the Big East Defensive Player of the Year. So Grant has more than held his own.
As far as Forty and Tony, we’ll have to see. It takes a while sometimes to get up to speed and break through and I think that’s maybe what you’re seeing a little bit with them. It took Shaheen Holloway five years to close on a game-changing recruit in Myles Powell, but boy was it worth it. Because I don’t follow recruiting as deeply as the recruiting cottage industry people, I don’t know how these assistants are doing at the early stages, in terms of opening doors with younger recruits. When Seton Hall is closing in on a commitment I'll start paying close attention and look into those connections. Part of the reason why I don’t do a lot of recruiting stuff is I devote much of my energy in the off season to the news-department side of my job, which is important for my long-term stability at the paper. And part of it is that I just got tired of being lied to. There’s so many lies, and I don’t want to pass lies on to my readers, so I just wait until a player is close to committing before I really start digging in. We’ll have to see about the other assistants, but I can tell you right now that Grant is very valuable and I think he is going to be a metropolitan area, low major and mid-major head-coaching candidate in the relatively near future.
Between players like Cliff Omoruyi and Paul Mulcahy committing to play at Rutgers and Bryce Aiken coming home to play for Seton Hall in recent years, among others, are we seeing Jersey players begin to take the home state programs more seriously as playing destinations?
Certainly the winning helps, the success helps. Steve Pikiell is very likable. Now that he’s won, he’s going to get players. He’s had Jersey connections for a long time. He recruited Jameel Warney and Bryan Dougher to Stony Brook from Union County, the heart of New Jersey high school basketball. So he already had a rep here. And he’s building on that now because he’s shown that Rutgers can be successful on his watch.
Kevin is not as outgoing, a little more reticent than Steve, but there’s a tremendous amount of respect in New Jersey basketball for the job that Kevin has done at Seton Hall. Everyone knows it’s a tough job, resources are limited. Everyone knows how bad the practice facility is. People trust Kevin to develop their players. That doesn’t mean that he’s going to get all these players because the high school coaches at this point only have marginal impact on this stuff. There’s a lot of side characters and middle men in the recruitment of some of these players. But I do think the success that Kevin’s had with developing a Jersey guy in Myles Powell into a superstar, there’s no question that that led to Bryce Aiken coming home.
I’m not a big believer in the Pied Piper thing, that a recruit comes in and all of sudden he’s a Pied Piper for all these other recruits. That may happen sometimes but that’s not a rule, that’s not a consistent thing that happens. What happens though is that if Jersey guys stay home and succeed at a place, then maybe that school has a better chance at getting the next guy. That’s definitely what happened with Bryce Aiken. I think that’s what happened to a degree with Cliff Omoruyi and Ron Harper. It wasn’t an accident that when Omoruyi made his official visit that they paired him with Ron Harper as his host. And look, Myles Powell had a huge hand in Bryce Aiken coming here and he played that Jersey card hard. There’s a lot of other factors, but the winning helps and I think there’s a chance it could perpetuate. In the end though each recruitment is its own individual drama, for lack of a better word, or maybe that’s the perfect word.
How important is the commitment of Bryce Aiken?
He fills an enormous need, because the biggest thing Seton Hall needs is the backcourt scoring and that’s what he’s going to do. He’s an All Big East-caliber player if he stays healthy, and yes he’s small but the guy can play basketball. If you’ve seen him play you know how good he is. He can shoot, he can handle he’s as quick as a cat.
I also think he will pair very well with Takal Molson. They’re going to be like Powell and McKnight in a way. Now I’m not saying they’re going to be that good, I’m not saying that, but they’re going to be in a way where they can complement each other. Where McKnight didn’t need a lot of shots to influence a game, I think that’s going to be Molson. If Molson was a high usage player, he would probably not work that well with Aiken. You need a high usage to be with a lower usage guy in the backcourt.
So this is a good fit now because you have a lower usage Molson who’s going to impact games by, yeah he’ll attack the basket, but he’ll also cause turnovers, he’ll rebound, he’ll defend, he’ll get some junk points. He’ll score, the guy was a first-team All-MAAC player, and those guys usually translate well to the Big East. But he’s not going to need a ton of shots and will pick up the top perimeter player on the other team on defense. Whereas Aiken’s going to take a lot of shots and defend the weaker perimeter player, assuming the heights are comparable, cause he’s smaller.
So yeah I think they have the potential to fit like a glove, sure. And look, you need an experienced point guard, a guy who’s won a lot of games who can shoot the ball. Every team in the country was trying to sign that guy. So he’ll be a great fit for what they need, fills the number one need that they have and I think they’ll work well together. They’re not going to have the same quality backcourt they had, that’s a very rare pairing Seton Hall had this year, but I think Aiken’s coming here definitely rescues a backcourt that could have been problematic. Now it becomes a Big East-quality, winning backcourt.
By Zack Cziryak
What’s more important, the Big East Championship or the regular season or the tournament title?
The Big East Tournament because it's a media spectacle, it’s fun, it’s a tremendous experience cutting down the nets, hoisting the trophy, in the Garden. That’s a bigger deal from an experience and fan perspective, but winning the Big East regular season title is much more significant in my view. It’s much harder to do than to catch fire for three games. It’s recognized as the greater accomplishment by the NCAA Selection Committee every year as you see when it comes to seeding. And any coach will tell you it’s a much bigger accomplishment to win over the course of the season.
When Pat Hobbs hired Steve Pikiell his big rationale was that Stony Brook had won three or four regular season titles. Now as everybody knows they lost in the championship games in the America East a lot. Hobbs’ thing was that it’s so much harder to win the regular season. It shows you so much more about a coach than it does to win three games in a weekend. And I would extrapolate that to say it shows you more about a team to win the regular season that it does to win a tournament. Fans might disagree with me on which is a bigger deal, and that's fine. I’m not going to tell a fan which is more important to them, but if you’re asking me objectively there’s no question that winning the regular season is better.
I know you don’t concentrate on recruiting, but what is your opinions on Seton Hall's three assistant coaches?
First of all I think Grant Billmeier is a fantastic assistant coach. The development of the big guys on his watch has been terrific. Kevin trusts him to work with them and he’s done a great job. He's a good guy and has deep New Jersey roots -- grew up in Pennington, played for Patrick School, played and coached at Seton Hall, coached at FDU -- and that helps. The guy got Mamu. That’s an enormous recruit for the program, that’s his guy. If Seton Hall gets Sanogo, the big guy from Pat’s, he’ll have a big hand in that. He spotted Ro Gill, that was his guy. He found Romaro Gill sitting on the end of a Juco bench and convinced Kevin to go see him. This is the Big East Defensive Player of the Year. So Grant has more than held his own.
As far as Forty and Tony, we’ll have to see. It takes a while sometimes to get up to speed and break through and I think that’s maybe what you’re seeing a little bit with them. It took Shaheen Holloway five years to close on a game-changing recruit in Myles Powell, but boy was it worth it. Because I don’t follow recruiting as deeply as the recruiting cottage industry people, I don’t know how these assistants are doing at the early stages, in terms of opening doors with younger recruits. When Seton Hall is closing in on a commitment I'll start paying close attention and look into those connections. Part of the reason why I don’t do a lot of recruiting stuff is I devote much of my energy in the off season to the news-department side of my job, which is important for my long-term stability at the paper. And part of it is that I just got tired of being lied to. There’s so many lies, and I don’t want to pass lies on to my readers, so I just wait until a player is close to committing before I really start digging in. We’ll have to see about the other assistants, but I can tell you right now that Grant is very valuable and I think he is going to be a metropolitan area, low major and mid-major head-coaching candidate in the relatively near future.
Between players like Cliff Omoruyi and Paul Mulcahy committing to play at Rutgers and Bryce Aiken coming home to play for Seton Hall in recent years, among others, are we seeing Jersey players begin to take the home state programs more seriously as playing destinations?
Certainly the winning helps, the success helps. Steve Pikiell is very likable. Now that he’s won, he’s going to get players. He’s had Jersey connections for a long time. He recruited Jameel Warney and Bryan Dougher to Stony Brook from Union County, the heart of New Jersey high school basketball. So he already had a rep here. And he’s building on that now because he’s shown that Rutgers can be successful on his watch.
Kevin is not as outgoing, a little more reticent than Steve, but there’s a tremendous amount of respect in New Jersey basketball for the job that Kevin has done at Seton Hall. Everyone knows it’s a tough job, resources are limited. Everyone knows how bad the practice facility is. People trust Kevin to develop their players. That doesn’t mean that he’s going to get all these players because the high school coaches at this point only have marginal impact on this stuff. There’s a lot of side characters and middle men in the recruitment of some of these players. But I do think the success that Kevin’s had with developing a Jersey guy in Myles Powell into a superstar, there’s no question that that led to Bryce Aiken coming home.
I’m not a big believer in the Pied Piper thing, that a recruit comes in and all of sudden he’s a Pied Piper for all these other recruits. That may happen sometimes but that’s not a rule, that’s not a consistent thing that happens. What happens though is that if Jersey guys stay home and succeed at a place, then maybe that school has a better chance at getting the next guy. That’s definitely what happened with Bryce Aiken. I think that’s what happened to a degree with Cliff Omoruyi and Ron Harper. It wasn’t an accident that when Omoruyi made his official visit that they paired him with Ron Harper as his host. And look, Myles Powell had a huge hand in Bryce Aiken coming here and he played that Jersey card hard. There’s a lot of other factors, but the winning helps and I think there’s a chance it could perpetuate. In the end though each recruitment is its own individual drama, for lack of a better word, or maybe that’s the perfect word.
How important is the commitment of Bryce Aiken?
He fills an enormous need, because the biggest thing Seton Hall needs is the backcourt scoring and that’s what he’s going to do. He’s an All Big East-caliber player if he stays healthy, and yes he’s small but the guy can play basketball. If you’ve seen him play you know how good he is. He can shoot, he can handle he’s as quick as a cat.
I also think he will pair very well with Takal Molson. They’re going to be like Powell and McKnight in a way. Now I’m not saying they’re going to be that good, I’m not saying that, but they’re going to be in a way where they can complement each other. Where McKnight didn’t need a lot of shots to influence a game, I think that’s going to be Molson. If Molson was a high usage player, he would probably not work that well with Aiken. You need a high usage to be with a lower usage guy in the backcourt.
So this is a good fit now because you have a lower usage Molson who’s going to impact games by, yeah he’ll attack the basket, but he’ll also cause turnovers, he’ll rebound, he’ll defend, he’ll get some junk points. He’ll score, the guy was a first-team All-MAAC player, and those guys usually translate well to the Big East. But he’s not going to need a ton of shots and will pick up the top perimeter player on the other team on defense. Whereas Aiken’s going to take a lot of shots and defend the weaker perimeter player, assuming the heights are comparable, cause he’s smaller.
So yeah I think they have the potential to fit like a glove, sure. And look, you need an experienced point guard, a guy who’s won a lot of games who can shoot the ball. Every team in the country was trying to sign that guy. So he’ll be a great fit for what they need, fills the number one need that they have and I think they’ll work well together. They’re not going to have the same quality backcourt they had, that’s a very rare pairing Seton Hall had this year, but I think Aiken’s coming here definitely rescues a backcourt that could have been problematic. Now it becomes a Big East-quality, winning backcourt.
