PirateCrew: Seton Hall Pirates Football & Basketball Recruiting
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By Tyler Calvaruso
Seton Hall seemed like a safe bet to make its sixth consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance just a couple of weeks ago. Now, that streak is in firm jeopardy of ending.
Butler blitzed Seton Hall on Wednesday night, outscoring the Pirates 37-26 in the second half on its way to a 61-52 victory, adding another major blemish to Seton Hall’s NCAA Tournament bid after its loss to Georgetown last weekend.
The Pirates struggled mightily on both ends of the floor, shooting just 38% from the field and 22% from three while Butler shot nearly 50% from the field and went 15-16 at the free throw line. Seton Hall failed to capitalize on its minimal chances at the charity stripe, going 2-7 on the night.
“They came out and they just played better than us, unfortunately” Seton Hall coach Kevin Willard said. “I thought we got off to a decent start, but we just...we got three happy over the last couple of games, really three games. We just settled for too many threes. I hate to say it, but we missed two free throws toward the end of the [first] half and two to begin the [second] half and it took the wind out of our sails.
“I didn’t really think we came out with the right mindset of playing physical basketball. We gave up some big offensive rebounds in the second half that hurt us and gave them threes. They carried that momentum the rest of the game.”
Seton Hall scored 30 of its 52 points in the paint and led 26-24 at halftime. Butler outplayed the Pirates in nearly every other statistical category, though, as the Bulldogs outrebounded the Hall 36-28 and 29-19 on the defensive glass with Ike Obiagu playing just 14 minutes and only four in the second half.
“They went small. We’ve struggled when teams have gone small,” Willard said of Obiagu’s usage. “The one guy I was most worried about was Bryce Nze. He’s a good passer, a good rebounder and plays physical. They put him at the five spot and tried to space us out.”
Seton Hall’s seniors were missing in action throughout the game, as Myles Cale, Sandro Mamukelashvili and Shavar Reynolds combined to shoot 10-33 from the field and 5-19 from three. Cale scored just six points, while Mamukelashvili had 11 and Reynolds had nine.
“Offensively we got a bit hesitant,” Willard said. “I think we stood a little bit.”
With Seton Hall now on the wrong side of the NCAA Tournament bubble, its final two regular season games against UConn and St. John’s are now all the more important. Fans will be in attendance at the Prudential Center for the first time this season when UConn comes to town next weekend in what is not just a must-win game, but also Senior Day.
“These seniors deserve a great sendoff,” Willard said. “They’ve given a lot over their four years, five years. I think the fact that they’re going to have fans there is really, really special to them.”
Quick Thoughts
-There’s not much of a point in harping on how brutal Seton Hall’s loss to Butler was, so let’s take a look at what the Pirates need to do to make the NCAA Tournament from this point on. Sweeping UConn and St. John’s to end the regular season is now essentially a must. A deep run in the Big East Tournament is likely also needed to have any shot at an at-large bid. It’s tough to see that outcome happening after the last four games, but Seton Hall is no stranger to coming back from the dead. These circumstances will be much more difficult to overcome than the hardships of years past, though.
“Oh yeah, we have a lot of work to do,” Willard said when asked if UConn and St. John’s are must-win games. “We have two good opportunities. A great UConn team that had a huge win the other night at Georgetown is coming in and obviously St. John’s plays great at Carnesecca [Arena].”
-Seton Hall desperately needed Sandro Mamukelashvili to deliver a big game and he was nowhere to be found. The Pirates’ offense simply cannot operate at peak efficiency with its best player shooting 4-13 and 3-9 from the field and it showed against Butler. With Mamukelashvili struggling and Myles Cale and Shavar Reynolds producing next to nothing offensively, the game essentially ended as soon as Jared Rhoden went cold in the second half.
-Seton Hall’s free throw woes returned in full force and it couldn’t have happened at a worse time. A lot more went wrong for the Pirates than their struggles at the charity stripe, but you could see the team’s morale dip lower and lower with each miss. As Willard said, misses at the end of the first half and the beginning of the second half really dealt a blow to any momentum Seton Hall had at that point.
-To end on a positive note, Tyrese Samuel played tough down low and crashed the glass hard throughout the night. He hadn’t showed a ton of that throughout the season, so that is definitely an encouraging sign in his development.
