‘Chippy’ practices help Seton Hall reset, land huge win over Villanova
Seton Hall earned its sixth Quad 1 win while denting Villanova’s bubble hopes. “We understand what time it is,” Dre Davis said.
NEWARK – When Shaheen Holloway took over at Seton Hall, he promised to coach blue-collar teams that befitted the school and state they represented.
This year’s group has seemed out of sorts from time to time. They haven’t punched back when falling behind on the road, albeit in tough environments like Creighton and UConn this past week. Hall’s five Big East road losses came by an average of 23 points.
But to hear the players and Holloway tell it, that toughness rose back to the surface during the two days following Sunday’s 30-point loss to UConn.
“Very chippy,” Kadary Richmond said. “A lot of guys getting after it. No whistles involved, just playing basketball.”
While Richmond, Dre Davis and Jaden Bediako left the rest up to the imagination at the postgame podium, it’s clearly what Seton Hall needed at this critical juncture of the season.
The Pirates outrebounded Villanova by 10, forced the Wildcats to shoot 8-for-22 on layups and pulled out a 66-56 win to beat their rival for the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Seton Hall earned its sixth Quad 1 win while simultaneously denting Villanova’s bubble hopes.
“Like (Richmond) said, we understand what time it is,” Davis said. “This is a big part of the season. I think it’s just now everybody’s focused on one day at a time, getting the job done day in and day out.”
Bediako said he was primed for physical, “good old Big East basketball” in a rematch of a game Villanova won 80-54 last month in Pennsylvania. Eric Dixon had 18 points on highly efficient shooting that night, but Bediako met the moment Wednesday anytime Dixon or Tyler Burton went to the post. Dixon still got his 14 points, but finished 5-of-11 and just 1-of-4 in the second half.
Bediako, meanwhile, turned in his first double-double since the 3OT loss to Creighton, with 11 points and 12 rebounds.
“It starts in practice, really,” Bediako said. “Obviously those two losses we had was still fresh in my mind, and like (his teammates) said, practice was chippy and the coaches emphasized that a lot. Just knew how important this game was and every game is for us.”
Richmond was asked what it’s like to watch Bediako body guys down low.
“I’ve been seeing it since June, so I’m just glad you guys get to see it too,” he quipped.
Seton Hall’s defense played with grit again, and not just in the interior. The Pirates have not had great 3-point defense most of this season, but after allowing three early threes Wednesday, they held Villanova to 9-of-27 from the arc.
In the Wildcats’ past six wins, they had made double-digit 3-pointers while shooting 35.5% or better, so Holloway’s directive to chase their shooters off the line was well-informed.
This allowed the Pirates to halt an eight-game losing streak against their regional rivals. In Richmond’s three seasons here, they had beaten UConn, St. John’s and everyone else in the conference, but not Villanova.
“It feels good,” said Richmond, who also surpassed 1,000 career points in a Seton Hall uniform. “Like I said, the game plan that we had today and the two days preparing is what prepared us for this, for us to be in this opportunity to get a win. It feels good to finally get one.”
Holloway – now closing in on 20 wins and his first return to the NCAA Tournament since Saint Peter’s Elite Eight run – had called Seton Hall’s loss at Creighton a “good old-fashioned ass-whupping.” When the Pirates followed that up by being run over at Gampel Pavilion, the second-year coach said it was “embarrassing how we played.”
Practice in South Orange on Monday could not have been pleasant. Tuesday would not have been much easier.
“It’s how we prepare,” Holloway said. “I’m not one of those coaches that takes it light the day before a game. I practice hard the day before a game just to get us ready, and I thought we did that the last two days getting ready for a game like this. …
“It was chippy for a reason. I’m gonna leave it like that. It needed to be chippy.”
Naturally, the follow-up question whether his players made practice chippy or if he made sure of it himself.
“It was a combination,” he replied.
The discussion, as ever, will turn to the NCAA Tournament chase, and whether Seton Hall will lock up its bid if it takes care of lowly DePaul on Saturday night. Only 10 teams in the country have more Quad 1 wins than Seton Hall’s six; three of them are Big East brethren UConn, Marquette and Creighton, and four more play in the Big 12, where almost every game seems to count as a Q1 opportunity.
Outsiders may have looked at the Pirates’ final scores against Creighton and UConn and concluded they were frauds. In Holloway’s eyes, the team that showed up Wednesday (and has a 7-1 home conference record when Richmond plays) better represents Seton Hall at its best.
“The last two days was how it’s been before the last two road trips,” Holloway said. “Probably a little bit extra sauce was added to it, and that starts at the top. These guys have to understand, and they understood.”
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Happy Thursday, gang. Yesterday was my first taste of Villanova at Seton Hall – couldn’t make it out the past two years, though I covered the teams’ meeting in Philadelphia last season. The Prudential Center can really get jumping when there’s a good team on the floor.
I’ll be back there on Saturday for Field Level Media to see if DePaul will finish the season 0-20 in conference play. There’s also the matter of Big East tournament seeding to settle. As I wrote here, the scenario that gets Seton Hall the No. 3 seed is a win, a Marquette loss at Xavier (highly possible while Marquette is without injured guard Tyler Kolek) AND a Creighton win over Villanova. If Creighton loses, the two-way tie at 13-7 becomes a three-way tie and the Pirates no longer win the tiebreaker.
As a reminder, though, this newsletter won’t be published Sunday morning. Instead, I’ll be covering Saint Peter’s at Rider tonight for a special Friday morning edition, then I’m holding off till Monday to publish an all-inclusive conference week preview. There will still be a Tuesday edition, but I think I will lower the paywall on those for the rest of the season.
We say goodbye to one more men’s team and one women’s team in today’s Cleaning the Glass section:
Three Northeast Conference quarterfinal games on Wednesday night were close. FDU’s was not. The fifth-seeded Knights lost 82-61 at Le Moyne, putting an end to their season. FDU’s late-season shooting woes did them in, as a team that was averaging 78.1 points per game through Feb. 1 failed to get out of the 60s for the fourth straight game. Ansley Almonor was held to just seven points, but it was a fantastic season for the junior (16.4 points, 5.1 rebounds per game with 39.4% 3-point shooting). One question for this offseason is whether seniors Sean Moore and Joe Munden Jr. will choose to use their fifth year of eligibility.
This was a season to forget for Rutgers women’s basketball, to be perfectly honest. The Scarlet Knights’ 2-16 conference record landed them in last place in the Big Ten, and in Wednesday’s 11-versus-14 tournament game, their season ended with a 77-69 loss to Minnesota. Destiny Adams had the game of her life for Rutgers, setting the Big Ten tournament single-game record with 24 rebounds to go with 31 points. But Minnesota outdid Rutgers with more trips to the free-throw line, spoiling Adams’ huge night. Next year’s team must show improvement on defense; allowing 73 points a game, which ranks outside the top 330 in the country, doesn’t cut it.