Offseason preview: Seton Hall won the NIT. Who’ll be back for an encore?
After beating Indiana State 79-77, the question becomes how Seton Hall will build upon its second NIT championship in program history.
First, a word on the NIT: It matters.
To the players and coaches who choose to participate, and believe me, that number dwindled this year, the NIT matters. Its future is as cloudy as anything in college basketball as Fox Sports is set to introduce a Las Vegas-based alternative next year, which very well may unseat this as the No. 2 postseason tournament. But there’s history imbued in the National Invitation Tournament, a banner your program can be proud to hang.
Seton Hall played its best basketball of the season over the past three weeks, a clear response to the sting of being passed over by the NCAA Tournament selection committee. After fighting off Saint Joseph’s in a close call in the first round, the Pirates rolled most of the rest of the way.
They reached Thursday’s title game against Indiana State, and it had all the makings of a classic – Robbie Avila and the Sycamores play an abundantly fun brand of offense, they were right there with Seton Hall as NCAA snubs with something to prove and their fans showed up in droves to the final in Indianapolis.
It was worth your time to watch. In a game with 12 lead changes and nine ties, and scoring run after scoring run, Dre Davis hit the winning shot with 16 seconds left to cap a game-ending 9-0 run for Seton Hall to prevail 79-77.
“Indy was great for me,” said Davis, the Indianapolis native who always balls out at home. “To be able to come home and win two big games, compete for a national championship which is our goal and ultimately win, it was a great week.”
I think it’s fair to say no player or coach dreams of winning the NIT in October or November. But if you come up short of the NCAA Tournament, everyone’s ultimate goal, you have two options: accept the NIT’s invite or decline. You can stay home and start scouring the transfer portal (by the way, did St. John’s sign anyone yet?). Or you can play for a championship.
Al-Amir Dawes said after last week’s quarterfinal win over UNLV that this beat sitting home and playing video games. He wanted to end his college career by picking up some hardware. And he did it, winning Most Outstanding Player honors in the process.
The obvious question becomes how Seton Hall will build upon its second NIT championship in program history.
The 2024-25 outlook
Before anything, the school ought to be preparing a contract extension for Shaheen Holloway. In the past three years, Holloway has taken an underfunded MAAC program to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament and guided his alma mater to a 25-win season with a five-win run to the NIT title. He’s outfoxed the likes of John Calipari, Matt Painter, Dan Hurley and Rick Pitino with allegedly less talented rosters.
Louisville (and potentially West Virginia before that) sniffed around when it had a vacancy to fill; Holloway may not want to leave his alma mater, but the school can afford to remove any doubt by raising his reported $2.4 million salary so some big-name public school doesn’t try to woo him.
But the other reason to lock in Holloway that should be obvious is the signal Seton Hall can send to recruits, especially guards. Whether you’re a rising high school senior or someone in the transfer portal, if you don’t mind playing defense and being coached hard, I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to play for Holloway after watching Kadary Richmond, Dawes and Davis star this spring.
With that in mind, let’s look at the roster breakdown, scholarship players only:
Out of eligibility: Al-Amir Dawes, Jaden Bediako
Guards: Kadary Richmond*, Dylan Addae-Wusu*, Isaiah Coleman, Jaquan Sanders, Malachi Brown, JaQuan Harris, Jahseem Felton^
Forwards/wings: Dre Davis*, David Tubek
Bigs: Elijah Hutchins-Everett, Arda Ozdogan, Sadraque NgaNga, Godswill Erheriene^
*Can choose to use extra year of NCAA eligibility; ^Incoming freshman
This is the final year that players will have the choice to use a fifth “COVID” year of NCAA eligibility. Dawes (three seasons at Clemson, two at the Hall) and Bediako (four at Santa Clara, one at the Hall) are fully out, but Richmond, Addae-Wusu and Davis were freshmen in that COVID-interrupted year of 2020-21.
Richmond was the best player on this team and a top-five or six player in the entire Big East. He has pro potential, even if his name isn’t appearing in mock drafts yet. For these reasons, I think he’ll be the hardest to retain; if anyone is likely to enter his name in both the NBA draft pool and the transfer portal in the next week or two, it’s Richmond.
Still, it should be noted that when Richmond cut down his part of the net in Indy on Thursday, Jerry Carino reported that Hall fans chanted “One more year!” and he smiled and nodded his head back to them.
In similar fashion, Hall fans want Davis to stay bad. They quickly spread the hashtag #StayDavis on Twitter to voice their love and support for the wing who had a breakout year. I’ve heard secondhand that Seton Hall is going to prioritize retaining him. Remember, Davis has a girlfriend and young daughter to support. If some new NIL deals can be set up for him, no matter how you personally feel about NIL, you can’t shake your head at that. It’s better than throwing a new car into an $800K agreement to land a transfer, anyway.
I don’t think I’d be worried about the key underclassmen transferring out, especially after the thrill and emotional high of winning a championship. Elijah Hutchins-Everett is a South Orange-area guy and stands to see more playing time next year with Bediako gone. As for Isaiah Coleman, the first guard off the bench this season, he couldn’t participate in the last few NIT games due to illness; it had been termed the flu at one point, then the broadcast of Tuesday’s semifinal mentioned bronchitis. But Coleman was able to fly out to Indy to join the team for the championship game (he did not play). He told multiple fans there that he is coming back next year.
What does Seton Hall need, then, out of the transfer portal? Holloway wouldn’t turn down another readymade starting five in the Bediako mold. Temple guard Hysier Miller (15.9 points, 4.0 assists, 1.8 steals per game last year) has Hall among his final four choices. But above all, this team has no forwards if Davis elects not to return. Holloway could always play four guards and one big at all times, and he’d probably be happy to do so, but Davis so ably mixed guard skills with a forward’s length that you’d like to see someone of his profile stretch the floor for the Pirates next year.
The cold reality is that all five starters could be gone next fall, and the NIT title will become a memory more than a foundation for the next great Seton Hall team. But the flip side is, if even two of these seniors with eligibility want to run it back, this program could be a top-four outfit in the Big East once again.
Next time, the Pirates just can’t give the NCAA selection committee any room to make the wrong decision.
“If you guys seen the look on these guys’ faces when we didn’t make the (NCAA) tournament, and as their leader, not knowing what to say to them, it was the worst feeling in the world. Like, the worst feeling in the world,” Holloway said. “… Everybody looking to me like, ‘Coach, what happened? I thought this,’ and I’m looking like, ‘Fellas, I don’t have an answer for you.’
“From that, to going to this, getting drenched by those guys (in the postgame locker room celebration), it’s the best feeling in the world.”
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Hi there, hello. It’s been a busy week, eh? Let’s clean the glass with all the “in case you missed it” news around the state:
Rutgers has already landed two transfer commitments: Eastern Michigan guard Tyson Acuff and Princeton forward Zach Martini. I will dive into these more next Friday in a Rutgers offseason preview, but in short, it’s a hell of a good start. RU is moving faster than usual this portal cycle; per the Verbal Commits transfer database, the only power-conference programs with more transfer commitments as of Thursday night were Virginia Tech, Louisville and DePaul (the latter two due to new coaches undertaking massive rebuilds).
Speaking of Rutgers’ future, Dylan Harper had a terrific showing at the McDonald’s All-American Game the other night and was named co-MVP. He tallied 22 points, six rebounds, five assists, one steal and one block and shot 9-of-16 from the field (2-of-5 from 3-point range). My favorite play was the off-balance pass he made in transition at the 30-second mark here. His friend and fellow five-star Rutgers commit Ace Bailey added six points, five rebounds and two assists.
While Martini will be settling in at Rutgers, Princeton teammate Matt Allocco is unlikely to join him there. Allocco’s father told the Columbus Dispatch that the guard is “zeroing in on” Ohio State, Notre Dame, Villanova and Butler. A Columbus-area native, Allocco could do what Martini did and head to his hometown state school; I could also see him being a really intriguing fit at Villanova.
Derek Simpson is transferring to St. Joe’s. Here’s what he told Aaron Bracy’s Big5Hoops.com about his time at Rutgers: “Nothing but good experiences. I can’t thank Rutgers Nation, Rutgers fans enough. I learned a lot about who I am as a person, who I am as a basketball player, how my mind works. These past two years have been nothing but good stuff for me. I’m just trying to bring all of the knowledge I’ve learned in the last two years in one of the best conferences in America and just trying to take it somewhere else and bring my knowledge to St. Joe’s. Just try to put it all together this upcoming year.” Simpson was always a mature, classy guy in our dealings with him at RU and he ought to thrive in the Atlantic 10 Conference.
One more big name in the portal: Corey Washington. In this day and age, was he really going to last his whole career at Saint Peter’s? He went overlooked coming out of high school in Arkansas and was one of the best players in the MAAC this past season. He’s likely to land with a high-major now. But this is tough news for Bashir Mason and the Peacocks’ league title defense next year.