Season preview: Seton Hall forges on with new roster, ‘three D’s’ mantra
There’s no obvious star on this Pirates team yet, but Shaheen Holloway may have a group that’s better suited to his coaching style.
SOUTH ORANGE – The first time Shaheen Holloway got after Evansville transfer Yacine Toumi was before Toumi’s first practice with Seton Hall had even begun.
“I came (to the gym) like 45 minutes early just to get some shots up,” Toumi said. “Probably a funny thing, I didn’t tie my shoes. I was just trying to warm up. Coach Sha was sitting on this spot right here and he got into me, he was like, ‘Once you get in the gym, you need to be ready to go right away. Tie your shoes, you have to be warmed up, taped and all that.’”
Isaiah Coleman, entering his second year playing for Holloway, puts it succinctly.
“Three D’s: Discipline, dedication and desire. You gotta have them,” Coleman said. “… (Sha) preaches that every day, every day. He says, ‘Don’t come up them stairs unless you (have) discipline, desire and dedication and you’re willing to do it.’”
This 2024-25 Pirates team is stuffed with newcomers playing for Holloway for the first time, buoyed by two key returners in Coleman and Dylan Addae-Wusu who will have to help show the way.
It’s not a very highly thought-of group in national media predictions: They were chosen eighth of 11 in the Big East by both Lindy’s and Blue Ribbon, and the KenPom preseason ratings have the Pirates down at No. 91 nationally, below every conference foe except DePaul. The official Big East preseason poll won’t be out till next week.
Then again: When has a Holloway-coached team underachieved in recent memory? Normally the opposite happens. What were the preseason expectations for last year’s group that went on to finish fourth in a challenging Big East and win the NIT?
With such a large group of new faces collected mostly from the transfer portal, figuring out what Seton Hall will be this year is one of the tougher mysteries of the preseason. But one thing was both assuring and utterly predictable: At the team’s media day Monday, every player I heard speak had something to say about the importance of defense, without prompting.
Holloway will never be mistaken for a fan of the transfer portal, but the more time goes on, the more he can recruit guys who want to be coached hard and who will play his way, emphasizing defense, toughness and the three D’s.
“The one thing this team has, I could tell you the truth, they’re gonna compete at a high level, they’re gonna defend,” Holloway said. “And we’ve got bodies. We’re gonna put guys in there, and I hope – I’m gonna say this – I hope I don’t have to play somebody 35 minutes.”
‘Listen to his message’
When Seton Hall unveils its NIT banner in November, only four players on the current team will have had a hand in the achievement. Besides Addae-Wusu and Coleman, David Tubek (13 points, 13 rebounds in 83 total minutes) and walk-on David Gabriel are back from last year.
Addae-Wusu entered the portal briefly this offseason, meaning at one point it appeared the Pirates would lose all five of their starters – three transfers, two out of eligibility. But the burly guard opted to return, telling NJ.com he wanted to weigh his options but had “unfinished business” at Hall after missing the NCAA Tournament in 2024.
Then there’s Coleman, a two-time Big East Freshman of the Week winner who went on to be selected to the Big East All-Freshman Team. The Pirates’ de facto sixth man, he had memorable games as well as games where he disappeared.
He’s aiming to be more of a vocal leader for this year’s group. Coleman knows what it’s like to play for Holloway and can impart a big lesson onto the new guys.
“Don’t listen to the tone of (Holloway’s) message, you got to listen to his message,” Coleman said. “Because sometimes the tone can come off a little … but you gotta listen to what he says. Really listen and lock in to what he says, and you’ll go a long way.”
Coleman also wants to develop into more of a playmaker on the wing, which would no doubt round out his game and keep the ball moving fluidly around the Seton Hall backcourt.
As for the team that’s forming around him?
“Vibes is good, vibes is great,” he said. “Guys are still getting to know each other and stuff like that. Still trying to do a lot of stuff off the court, because if you’re connected off the court, you’re connected on the court. We still trying to figure out the team and stuff. But other than that, we’re good.”
Backcourt by committee
I’ve gone this long without writing the name Kadary Richmond. Friends, it’s going to be a different kind of year at Seton Hall.
Richmond played for the Pirates for the first three years of this newsletter’s existence, having big moments as a sophomore (27 points in a win against UConn) and becoming the lead dog for the next two years. Missing two big games in January due to “general soreness” didn’t exactly curry favor from the fan base, and after piloting the team to the NIT title, he not only hit the portal but joined bitter rival St. John’s for his last year of college hoops.
Richmond averaged 32.7 minutes per game; do-it-all forward Dre Davis (now at Ole Miss) played 32.9, and shooting guard Al-Amir Dawes (now graduated) was in for 35.0 per game. That’s what Holloway was alluding to when talking about the new roster’s depth; running a handful of starters into the ground was the opposite of how he coached at Saint Peter’s, where he rolled nine or 10 deep.
“When we’re healthy … we’ve got seven guards, right? We’ve got three centers and we’ve got three fours,” Holloway said. “I’m looking forward to some guys playing. … I’m looking forward to putting it together. I’m gonna be honest with you, it ain’t gonna be easy.”
Among the new guards competing for playing time: former four-star high school prospects Garwey Dual and Zion Harmon, each of whom had interest from Seton Hall before committing elsewhere as freshmen. Providence transfer Dual offers a good 6-foot-5 frame and prior Big East experience in small spurts.
“I would say I’m adjusting myself by just learning from a lot of mistakes I make here, and I’ve done the same for the team. A lot of mistakes that are made, we try not to make twice and just learn from them,” Dual said.
Harmon is an interesting case. The 6-foot point guard committed to Western Kentucky for the 2021-22 season but left the team for personal reasons. He landed at Bethune-Cookman and was one of the most productive players in the SWAC for two years.
Harmon (14.6 points, 4.0 assists, 2.1 rebounds, 1.7 steals, 93.2% free-throw shooting last year) is ready to test himself at a higher level and credited Holloway as the reason he chose Seton Hall.
“It’s no way that it can’t help, the experience that you’re dealing with when the person in front of you has done it in the exact same uniform,” Harmon said of Holloway’s background.
Harmon said he’s enjoying attacking the tasks set out for him each day in South Orange.
“Number one thing is a regimen. We take care of every schedule, every day,” he said. “So whatever the schedule, we’re gonna go through it and handle every single thing. So building up a continuous regimen is first and foremost the best thing for me going from an ‘adult teenager’ to an actual adult.”
Looks good Toumi
Seton Hall has an all-new group of centers for the second straight season. Last year, the program struck portal gold with fifth-year Jaden Bediako, and Elijah Hutchins-Everett also contributed before deciding to transfer out.
At Monday’s practice, freshman centers Godswill Erheriene and Assane Mbaye were getting coaching on post-up moves off to the side of the main court. Louisville transfer Emmanuel Okorafor was the only player not participating due to injury. Wisconsin transfer Gus Yalden looks promising and will probably get some time at the five down the line, but he’s yet to play a minute of college basketball after redshirting in 2023-24.
That leaves Toumi, the Frenchman who tested the NBA draft waters after two solid years at Evansville. Not known for his outside shooting, Toumi was drilling threes Monday. He made more than 58 percent of his 2-point shots last season and was a reliable rebounder.
But he knows this isn’t the Missouri Valley Conference anymore. Toumi called the Big East the best conference in America and shared his excitement to be so close to New York City.
His portal recruitment “went really quick because to be honest, I didn’t even know I was going to come back in college,” Toumi said. “I went through the draft process, worked out for a couple NBA teams and after the feedback that I had, like I said, me and my old coach at Evansville, he really knew Coach Sha really well and I trusted both guys. I just visited a couple schools, I visited St. John’s, Utah, West Virginia, but it really came down to Seton Hall because I trusted both coaches and they had a really solid plan with me.”
Toumi, who’s been at small high schools and colleges from Maine to Arkansas to Indiana since coming to the States, showed he knows his sport quite well when asked why the Pirates were being rated so low.
“Probably because we got like 11 new guys coming in, including me,” Toumi said.
“But Coach Sha is definitely a coach that’s a winner. He did it before with Saint Peter’s, he did it before with his other teams. We definitely not paying attention to the rankings and all that, because when both teams trying to be on the court, we’re definitely trying to see who’s the real dog. We’re gonna surprise everybody.”
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Hey there, hello. As always, thanks for stopping by. I’ve now published previews of New Jersey’s big three programs (Rutgers, Seton Hall and Princeton) but much more preseason coverage is on the way, starting Friday. I rarely publish on back-to-back days, but after running only one edition last week, you know I had to make up for it with three newsletters this week.
For today, let’s clean the glass with a few stray notes on Seton Hall and Rutgers:
When I walked up to Yalden at media day, he was chatting with the team’s radio duo about his preparation for the season. “Doing a bunch of different stuff in the weight room, just working on my body,” Yalden said. “I paid a lot more attention to what I was eating, putting in my body. Got away from the Wisconsin fried food a little bit.” Safe to say that cutting out brats and fried cheese curds have made a difference. Seton Hall’s roster online still has Yalden at 258 pounds, but the roster reporters were handed in person lists him at 210.
The players are trying to do things to bond off the court, and Toumi revealed something unexpected: The Seton Hall basketball team hung out at the Rutgers football game against Wisconsin last Saturday. “We’re just chilling, doing some teenager things, you know what I mean,” he said. “Just go hang out together, play video games, nothing crazy.”
I won’t be at the Rutgers-St. John’s charity exhibition tonight, so I’m grateful that they’ll be broadcasting it on the Big Ten Network. As Mr. Jon Rothstein himself likes to tweet, these need to be streamed (if not outright televised) for fans who can’t attend. Win-win situation for programs to build excitement before the season tips off.
Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper share the cover of the latest SLAM Magazine. The magazine’s accompanying story shares some good details, including Bailey recalling the day he verbally committed to Rutgers in the locker room while on his visit.