PirateCrew: Seton Hall Pirates Football & Basketball Recruiting
The definitive source for all PirateCrew news.
Welcome to Part 1 of my three-part interview with FOX Sports and Big East broadcaster (and of course, Seton Hall graduate) John Fanta. As always, John had tons of opinions, insight and information. In this installment, we discussed Seton Hall’s hiring of Donald Copeland as assistant coach, the renewal of the Seton Hall-Rutgers series, the Pirates’ incoming transfers and the SHU men’s soccer team’s magical run to the College Cup quarterfinals.
J.P. Pelzman: How impactful do you see the three transfers being for Seton Hall?
John Fanta: Very impactful, starting with (South Florida transfer) Alexis Yetna. I think there is a clear need in the frontcourt for somebody to be a physical presence, to rebound the basketball, and Alexis Yetna is going to give Seton Hall that. I think he is a really quality addition who is under the radar nationally but is someone I expect to make a contribution right from the get-go. They need some physicality there. Ike Obiagu is a quality center, but we both know Obiagu has run into foul trouble from time to time and Tyrese Samuel, they’re still waiting for him to fully blossom into what he can be. It's a big year for Tyrese Samuel.
In the midst of all that, you have to have some consistency, and I think Alexis Yetna is going to provide consistency in the frontcourt. I don’t know what he’ll do numbers-wise necessarily, but if he can defend and he can rebound, Seton Hall has had good guard play before. They are going to have enough in their backcourt to score the basketball. They don’t need Alexis Yetna to score a ton, but they need him to contribute physically and on the glass.
The expectation is that Kadary Richmond is someone they will be able to rely on at the point. He's a good defender, he’s lengthy, he’s a versatile player. And I expect him to make an immediate impact as someone they’re going to trust with the ball in his hands late in games because they need someone they can trust at the 1 late in games. The fact is, there’s uncertainty as to what the point guard position holds for this Seton Hall team.
JPP: True.
JF: But I know one thing. Jim Boeheim brought in Kadary Richmond. And I trust in what I've heard and I trust in Kevin Willard’s ability to develop talent and to take guys to the next level and I think Richmond should be a guy who takes his game to the next level and can be counted on in key situation in that backcourt to manage the game. And that is something last year’s Seton Hall team did not have enough of, especially late in games, managing the game the way Quincy McKnight did a couple of years ago when he just had to hold the ball and make something happen or get it in the hands of the right guy.
Jared Rhoden is the star of this (2021-22) team, but Jamir Harris has been a bucket. He has been, on a totally different level. He's a very high-end scorer, someone who can shoot the basketball well. Perimeter shooting came and went at times for Seton Hall last year, so Harris is going to help them score the ball. He's a quality add, too. The moment they added him, I looked at what he had done at American and I saw a guy who I fully expect to be a part of the scoring equation for a team that has to score the ball efficiently.
That’s the biggest thing for Harris, to be able to score in the Big East. That’s the biggest thing we often see with guys who go from the mid-major level to the power conferences--do they take their efficiency to a power conference? It's going to be harder to score the ball in the Big East. It's going to be harder to take the right shots when you make that jump.
And look, there’s only one basketball and The Hall has a lot of different options, but I expect all three of these transfers to be part of that eight-, nine-man rotation. Seton Hall could go deep (into the post-season) and I think these three guys could be part of the reason why.
JPP: I know they can’t pencil him in for X amount of points because of all the injuries he’s had, but now that we know that Bryce Aiken is returning to Seton Hall, is there any chance he could write that storybook ending to his college career and be a major contributor for the Pirates? I mean, unfortunately for the young man, it just never seems to come together physically.
JF: I think we all hope that for Bryce Aiken. We all hope that a New Jersey kid who’s come home to finish his college career can be a guy that can contribute in different segments. You look at what he did at the end of the first half at Xavier last year, in what was, in my opinion, Seton Hall’s most complete performance of the season. They dominated Xavier from tip to buzzer and put on a show. It was an absolutely terrific performance and Bryce Aiken was a huge propeller in that end of the first-half run that essentially put the game away.
JPP: No doubt.
JF: When Bryce Aiken is healthy, he’s a program-changing player. The problem is the “when healthy” has been such
a big if. But is there a possibility for a storybook ending? Absolutely. And I think some people often will look at a kid and say, “he’s hurt, or he’s been hurt, or he’s always been hurt.” The kid doesn’t want to always be hurt. He wants to play. And he wants to make things work.
We both know this. (Trainer) Tony Testa has done a really great job at Seton Hall. I would think that Tony Testa and Kevin Willard had talked about a game plan potentially for Bryce Aiken when he is healthy going forward. How do you try to manage situations? How do you try to keep him fresh for big moments? I do think one thing we can agree upon, J.P., and maybe you’ll disagree with me, but Bryce Aiken is the type of player that he’s spent enough time being injured, that when he does come off the injury, he doesn’t need as much of an adjustment period in terms of getting back into game action. Because he’s shown before in his career when he comes back off an injury, when he first gets back in, he’s able to make an impact.
JPP: Yes, that’s true.
JF: Certain guys have a lot of trouble coming back from an injury. At least Bryce Aiken has had a lot of situations where he’s had to come off of something and contribute.
JPP: This is true.
JF: Now it’s matter of, maybe you say, we’re not going to play him in this game because we want fully rested for this (next) game. I wouldn’t worry about him being rusty. … I think you’ll have to manage (his playing time). The good news is you have reinforcements, including a good freshman class coming in. You've got to find a way to manage the workload and you’ve got the
right guys in place to maneuver your way around that (Aiken’s availability).
JPP: Obviously, John, you are impartial in your roles with the Big East and FOX, but as a Seton Hall grad, you do know plenty of fellow Pirate alums. What does it mean for the fans and for the programs that the Seton Hall-Rutgers series will continue, after it looked for a little while that it might not?
JF: There's a lot of pride for fans, and it matters, and it’s something that gets talked about. I'm down the Jersey Shore a lot this summer and I’ll be at Bar A July 3 and I’ll definitely hear from some Rutgers fans about the rivalry and the series and I love that. I’m a New Jersey transplant, right? I grew up outside of Cleveland but now I’m in Jersey. It's a rivalry. It means a lot. The series is important for New Jersey college basketball.
Do the teams need to play each other? No, they don’t. They don’t need to play each other. But it’s good for fan engagement. It's good for making a gate. It's a no-brainer for both athletic departments to do it and to brand around it and to get that national exposure that it does deliver on that day.
I am rubbed the wrong way, as a journalist, by some of the biased opinions that I have seen come out on this rivalry. And also opinions that have absolutely no merit and no logic to them that just get thrown out there and just get spewed out there. It makes me question sometimes the industry itself.
I have to say this--what Steve Pikiell has done is as good any coach has done in college basketball in recent years. It says a lot. Rutgers is a very good program. (But) to say that Seton Hall is dodging Rutgers when
Seton Hall flew a plane to Omaha to play Oregon and lose to Oregon, when Seton Hall did whatever it could to play games at Penn State, at Rhode Island. The fact is, Seton Hall did whatever it could to schedule people. In a year like last year, you’re not able to go through the motions. You're not able to wait on a game.
Did things fall through the cracks? Yes. Should the head coaches perhaps have done more to make the game happen last year? Yeah. But to say that people are dodging others when Seton Hall played one of the toughest schedules in the country is ridiculous. It's an absolutely ridiculous take. And that’s why this game is definitely going to get played this season. Nobody's dodging each other. Do people not realize we just went through this pandemic season and there were a lot of variables that led to certain things not happening.
So, I do think that this game is important, but it’s also important to remember that there are things bigger than this game that happened last season and to have some animosity (about) it certainly adds fire to the rivalry. I just think a lot of the fire doesn’t stand on real ground.
