PirateCrew: Seton Hall Pirates Football & Basketball Recruiting
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By JP Pelzman
Some thoughts and observations on Seton Hall’s 68-60 win over Butler on Saturday.
Mamu is crushing it.
Sandro Mamukelashvili sparked the first-half comeback with a terrific move in which he switched the ball from his left to right hand and for a power driving layup, cutting the deficit to 18-13.
The play illustrated how difficult the 6-11 senior is to defend. By now, everyone in college basketball knows that Mamukelashvili's dominant side is left-handed, yet when he can make a move to his right side so effortlessly, it makes him almost impossible to defend. He had 24 points and nine rebounds Saturday and is averaging 18.7 points and 6.9 rebounds.
“He played phenomenal,” wing Jared Rhoden said of Mamukelashvili. “He’s a mismatch nightmare for anybody. We knew they had a smaller team, so we knew if we threw the ball into the post and let him work, allow him to make the right reads, he’d get a bucket for us and that’s what he did.”
“I think he’s growing into this role really nice,” said coach Kevin Willard, who repeatedly has said he believes Mamukelashvili is the best player in the country. “I still believe he’s got another level that he’s going to play at as the season goes on. There’s times where he gets a little ahead of himself. I think when he realizes the speed he needs to play with at times, you’re going to see (him) take another jump this season. I truly believe that. I think he’s the best player in the country right now, but I also think you’re going to see (him) get better as the season goes on.”
Reynolds solidly steady.
Shavar Reynolds had 10 points, three assists and, most importantly, no turnovers against the Bulldogs. That last statistic is crucial in a game such as Saturday’s, because each possession was magnified in the second half with short-handed Butler not pushing the pace and turning the game into a grind-it-out affair.
Reynolds “always studies the game, always watches the film,” Mamukelashvili said. “Sometimes he sends me the clip and says, ‘We should do this here.’ … Definitely, I’m comfortable with him because he knows how to play and he’s watched a lot of great guys before him and he’s just experienced now. I’m feeling very comfortable when he’s got the ball in his hands and I know he’s going to do the right thing.”
Reynolds, who has started all 12 games this season, has 59 assists and 23 turnovers.
Pump the brakes.
Bryce Aiken followed up a breakout performance at Xavier with a less-than-scintillating one against the Bulldogs. In 13-plus minutes, he shot 0-for-2 from three-point land with one assist, one turnover and one steal. On the positive side, he made two clutch free throws to help ice the game in the final minute, as Willard added him to the late-game lineup for extra ballhandling and foul shooting help.
Still, the Pirates need more consistency from Aiken before it can be proclaimed that he truly is back to the level he showed at Harvard, and it is that level that is needed for this Pirates team to maximize its post-season potential.
Scouting Creighton.
The Bluejays (8-2, 4-1 Big East) escaped from Providence with a 67-65 victory on Saturday thanks to Christian Bishop’s dunk with 0.5 seconds left off a feed from Martin Zegarowski. Creighton routed the Pirates in Omaha in the final game for both teams last year before the season ended abruptly. That loss cost The Hall the outright regular-season title, and created a three-way tie between Creighton, Seton Hall and Villanova.
Creighton is being allowed to have 10% of capacity for its home games, and had a crowd of 1,673 for its 66-61 victory over Xavier on Dec. 22. It will be interesting to see how much noise they can make.
As for the Bluejays themselves, Zegarowski is averaging 14.4 points and 4.9 assists and is shooting 38.7% from beyond the arc. As a team, Creighton shoots 36.7% from long distance, and defending the perimeter, as always, will be a point of emphasis for the Pirates against the Bluejays.
COVID concerns.
St. John’s had its Big East game against visiting DePaul postponed Saturday morning shortly before tipoff because of a Tier 1 positive test for the Red Storm. It's unclear who tested positive, but St. John’s chose to let players leave campus for the holidays, just as did Villanova, which also currently is shut down for the same reason.
Personally, I think all these measures are draconian to some extent, but this, unfortunately, is the world we are living in. Thus, it makes it even clearer that Willard did the right thing by keeping his players on campus during the Christmas break between the Pirates’ victories over Georgetown on Dec. 23 and Xavier on Dec. 30.
Going forward, one wonders what will happen with conference tournaments. Can they be played the conventional way? Or will they have to be played in bubbles, much the way the NCAA is planning to stage its tournament? The answers have to be found, because what happens if a top seed gets shut down immediately before the NCAAs are scheduled to begin?
The NCAA must have a tournament this season, because that TV revenue is the life source of all college sports. But it also needs to be a fair tournament, with the proper teams in it, and not a tournament with teams missing because of the virus. Somehow, someway, all of this needs to be figured out before March Madness becomes more literal than anyone would like.
