Full Seton Hall-related text, for anybody without a subscription:
Welcome, for the first time this season, the fighting Shaheen Holloways! (Quick, someone superimpose Holloway’s face on the actual Seton Hall Pirates logo. Please.) After UConn’s thorough dismantling of Creighton on Wednesday night — we have really got to stop counting on Creighton to win big games, by the way, especially on Wednesdays — guess who’s tied with the Huskies atop the vaunted Big East? Winners of five straight, three of those away from home, the Pirates are playing their best ball right now. Since the calendar flipped, BartTorvik ranks Holloway’s team as the 15th-best in the country — ahead of BYU, Wisconsin, and even the Connecticut team Seton Hall beat back on Dec. 20. (And yes, that Connecticut win is going to be as valuable come Selection Sunday as you’d think it would.)
So, yay, fun, Seton Hall! But… how, Seton Hall? The Pirates are outside of the top 200 nationally in 3-point percentage, frequently turn the ball over, and don’t rebound or defend the 3 particularly well, either. It is, to put it mildly, an unconventional formula. But a few things that counteract all that. First, the Pirates are No. 7 in offensive rebounding percentage, per KenPom, gobbling up almost 40 percent of their missed shots. (It helps, in that respect, that they don’t attempt as many 3s.) Relatedly, then, Seton Hall attempts the fifth-most 2s of any high-major team. Combine that with a slight uptick in 3-point percentage — Seton Hall has made 41.4 percent from deep this month, a top-50 rate nationally — and you’ve got the makings of a decent offense.
The other thing that makes Seton Hall work, in the most philosophical sense, is that Holloway has the 10th-oldest team in college basketball. He starts five seniors! In this era! The best of the bunch, easily, is
Kadary Richmond, who was awesome at
Syracuse as a freshman and is still awesome one state over. During Seton Hall’s current five-game winning streak, the 6-foot-6
Richmond is averaging 18.6 points, 8 rebounds, 5.6 assists, and 1.2 steals per game, including three consecutive 20-point games in wins over
Marquette,
Georgetown, and
Butler. He’s just flat good — and the further we get into this season, maybe the same can be said for his team at large. —
Marks
