PirateCrew: Seton Hall Pirates Football & Basketball Recruiting
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JP's FDU tidbits
Thoughts and observations from Seton Hall’s 93-49 victory over Fairleigh Dickinson, its first 40-point blowout since an 89-49 opening-night victory over Wagner on Nov. 6, 2018. (New assistant coach and former Pirate player Donald Copeland was on the other side of that one as a Wagner assistant.)
Samuel shines. This was the Tyrese Samuel everyone had been waiting to see. Not only were the 19 points and 11 rebounds impressive, but so were the four blocked shots. He played to his 6-10, 230-pound size.
“This summer I was really locked in to have a big season to help our team get to March Madness,” Samuel said. “I feel like if I step up my game, and everyone (else) plays well, the sky’s the limit for us.”
Coach Kevin Willard indicated he believes Samuel can make a similar junior-season leap in performance as Sandro Mamukelashvili did. If that happens, the sky is indeed the limit for the Pirates.
Cale’s milestone. Myles Cale’s 15 points nudged him over the 1,000-point mark for his career. He admitted that’s why he was still on the court with the outcome decided, just to get it out of the way. Of course, he would’ve gotten it last year had it been a regulation season, or had the Pirates made the NCAAs.
Cale's two foul shots with 3:30 left, just after the final media timeout, gave the super senior 1,001 points in Pirate blue and white. “I was out there jacking up shots, trying to get fouled,” he admitted. “(The coaches) knew I needed one more point. … I know a lot of people have been through this program. I'm up there with a lot of special people.”
I don’t have a problem with getting it out of the way. Better to do it than to have it become something Cale is thinking about early in the Yale game.
Richmond struggles. Touted transfer point guard Kadary Richmond had four points, one assist, two turnovers and five fouls in just under 15 minutes of action. Willard noted how Richmond must adapt to playing in his man-to-man concepts as opposed to Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim’s trademark 2-3 zone.
“It's definitely a transition,” Willard said. “In a 2-3 zone, you get to stand a lot and shoot gaps, and in a man-to-man, you have to sit down and guard someone.”
Willard added that Richmond must learn “when to be aggressive and when not to be aggressive."
“In a zone you can be aggressive at all times,” he added. “It kind of lends itself to that. He just has to learn how to pick his spots a little better but I'm not going to stop him from being aggressive."
Jackson impresses. Missouri transfer Tray Jackson, who played sparingly last year, had 14 points and six boards in just under 17 minutes. About the only thing Tray didn’t do was hit a trey, going 0-for-1 from beyond the arc. But that’s not why he’s out there. If the 6-10 forward can provide scoring punch in the paint and rebounding, he’ll be doing his job.
"I always knew that's the way Tray was going to play," Willard said. "The COVID summer really hurt Tray because A--he was sitting out, and B--we didn't think he was playing, so it just didn't work. Tray had a great summer, and that's kind of what we see every day in practice."
FDU not the greatest barometer. Fairleigh Dickinson is young, as veteran coach Greg Herenda admitted. The Knights, of course, were hurt by the transfer of star guard Jahlil Jenkins to Stony Brook. After hanging for 15 minutes as Seton Hall missed shots, the Knights couldn’t do it any longer. Going 1-for-15 from downtown didn’t help.
Herenda said of the Pirates, “If they make shots like that, they’re going to beat a lot of people. … They took it to another level and we just couldn’t match it.”
Of Bryce Aiken, Herenda said, “He's a Big East guard. He’s a difference-maker.”
Of his own team, the always-quotable Herenda said, “We're very young. … These games make us better. These games help us. You play good teams and you get exposed.”
Mixing and matching. Willard said he would use different lineups throughout the season given the amount of talent the Pirates have.
“I’m not going to have a set starting lineup,” he said, “to match up with the schedule we have and to make teams adjust to us at times.”
He believes this will make The Hall more difficult for opposing coaches to prepare for.
Students on his side. The student section chanted “We love Willard” at one point. When asked about it, Willard quipped, “I wish I would have heard that chant. It would have made my life. Give it a couple weeks, when we get back. We’ll see what that chant is.
Like most coaches and their staffs, Willard stuck with last year’s look of sweat suits, but he indicated that would change. Herenda and his staff were in the pre-COVID look of jackets and ties.
“Seeing Greg in it,” Willard said, “and their staff, I made the decision right there we would go back to suits, starting on Sunday” against Yale.
Scouting Yale. The Bulldogs are kind of an unknown, much like all Ivy teams, after the league went on hiatus last year. But they have been picked to win the conference in the preseason poll and senior guard Azar Swain (16.0 points per game in 2019-20) is one of several key returnees. An opening-night win over Vassar doesn’t tell us much, but a Friday night home game against UMass should provide more clues.
