PirateCrew: Seton Hall Pirates Football & Basketball Recruiting
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By Colin Rajala
Seton Hall Head Coach Shaheen Holloway will spend a lot of time searching this off-season – searching for what went wrong during this year’s 7-25, 2-18 campaign, searching for answers in the transfer portal, searching for the solution to roster construction in this new era of collegiate basketball.
The alumnus and former all-conference point guard will also enter the 2025-2026 season, his fourth season at the helm of Seton Hall, searching for his first Big East tournament victory as a coach as the Pirates fell in the opening round of the conference tournament for a third consecutive season.
Two weeks after losing at home to Villanova (19-13, 11-9) by five points and three months after losing down on the Maine Line by 12 points, Seton Hall came up short against the Wildcats once again, this time 67-55 after digging an early hole that proved to be too much to overcome.
Villanova took an early 6-0 lead less than three minutes into the game, including two buckets in the paint from Enoch Boakye, before extending the lead to 13-4 by the first media timeout.
The Wildcats pushed their lead to 17-4 in the first eight minutes of action on another run, this time a 9-0 steak, before extending it even further as part of an 8-0 run capped by a three-pointer from Wooga Poplar for a commanding 25-6 lead, one that would prove to be the difference in the game’s result.
Sixth-seeded Villanova was led Eric Dixon’s 19 points, all of which came in the second half, while Poplar recorded a double-double with 13 points and 10 rebounds, Tyler Perkins scored 11 points off the bench and Boyake tallied nine points, nine rebounds, two assists and a block.
The eleventh-seeded Pirates saw Isaiah Coleman lead all scorers with 25 points to go along with four rebounds, three assists and a steal as Prince Aligbe registered 10 points, five rebounds, two assists, one steal and one block and Emmanuel Okorafor recorded eight points and three rebounds off the bench.
Villanova led by as many as 19 points in the first half before entering halftime up 35-17 thanks to 5/9 shooting from long distance.
Seton Hall came out of Madison Square Garden’s locker room with energy and purpose to start the second half as they connected on their first five field goals to close the gap to 37-29 as part of a 12-2 run capped by a high arcing fallaway baseline jumper from Okorafor to force a timeout from Villanova Head Coach Kyle Neptune.
On the ensuing possession, Dixon, potentially facing his final game as a collegiate player, asserted himself by connecting on a three from the wing for his first points in the game to give the Wildcats some breathing room at 40-29.
As part of extending Villanova’s lead back to double digits, Dixon scored eleven of the Wildcats 13 points in their 13-0 run to blow the game back open, 50-29.
Seton Hall outscored Villanova by nine points over the final 12 minutes and 30 seconds of the game, 26-17, but the early deficit proved to be their undoing as their season came to a close.
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