PirateCrew: Seton Hall Pirates Football & Basketball Recruiting
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Q&A by Colin Rajala with Bryan Felt
Trove: As part of your definition of success, you talked about program culture. When I think about that, particularly as it relates to the men's basketball team, I think about this past year and how the team rebounded from the lowest of lows of being snubbed from the NCAA Tournament to reach some of the highest highs in winning the NIT Championship, which I think that resiliency speaks volumes about the culture. What are your thoughts on how Sha and the men’s squad handled the whole scenario?
Felt: Oh my, it was truly, truly, truly, amazing. I give incredible credit to Sha and his staff and most importantly the young men on the team. Listen, when we talk about the whole thing, I'll be very clear – the Big East should have had at least four teams in the NCAA Tournament and Seton Hall should have absolutely been that fourth team. There is no question about it to me.
Honestly, we were completely shocked when we weren't selected for the tournament. I remember that day as well as any. I was on the phone with Sha during the day and I said to him, “Listen, we have to determine, should we not get in, what are we going to do?” If anybody knows Coach Holloway, he’s a little superstitious, so he was like “We shouldn't even be having this conversation” and “I don’t want to have this conversation because we’re in.”
I said, “I don't disagree with you, I know we're in, but we need to be prepared” and to his credit he said “Yeah, yeah, I know. Let me think on it.” Honestly, I told this to a lot of fans and donors, my initial reaction was if we didn’t get in, we probably wouldn't play because I kind of felt like more and more teams were not going to play and I didn't think it was as taboo to not do it.
I think he and I were on the same page to be honest with you, but as we talked that day, he thought the best thing to do was see what the guys wanted to do and that he probably wouldn’t do that until we knew what was going to happen.
I said “Okay, fair enough, but let's be prepared because we’re going to be in a tight window and things have to happen pretty quickly.”
So, when we found out, he went to his guys and the way he handled it, I couldn't have been any happier. He sat them in the locker room and put it to them and said, “This is hard, I know what we’re all dealing with right now is really challenging and I'm devastated by it.” The guys were devastated by it and looking them in the eyes was hard for Sha, you could see how upset they were, but he gave them the choice to play or call it a season and credit to those guys, the captains came up to his office and said, “We want to play.” So, we were happy to do it and we were certainly happy with the results.
The way the fanbase got behind these guys, the sense of everything and everyone in the building for those games at Walsh was just incredible. For them to turn something so depressing and disappointing into something so positive and uplifting, was truly amazing. In my history in this business, it really was one of the greatest things I’ve gotten to be a part of without question.
