Seton Hall women storming through Big East with disruptive defense
Even by Seton Hall’s own standards, Wednesday was a stellar defensive performance, their 19 steals setting a season high.
SOUTH ORANGE – By the start of the second quarter, you could tell the game was getting away from Butler fast.
To open the period, Savannah Catalon got a hand on a Butler pass, deflecting it to Jada Eads, who knocked down a jump shot on Seton Hall’s ensuing possession. Then Catalon flew in front of a pass on the Bulldogs’ next trip and took it the other way for an easy layup.
Less than 13 minutes into the game, Butler had already committed 10 turnovers. And Seton Hall’s dynamic defense was getting in their opponents’ heads: What was then a 16-6 margin expanded to 29-6 before Butler managed to prevent a second-quarter shutout with five points in the final minute.
All told, Seton Hall held Butler off the scoreboard for the final 3:27 of the first quarter and the first 9:07 of the second. The Pirates scored a whopping 23 points uninterrupted.
Even by Seton Hall’s own standards, Wednesday was a stellar defensive performance. The Pirates make their hay by forcing turnovers, and in this 71-48 win against Butler their 19 steals set a season high.
It’s clear that coach Tony Bozzella has given the green light to his players, the guards in particular, to get into their opponents’ passing lanes and try to anticipate where the ball is going. Catalon had six steals to go with 15 points Wednesday, and Eads, the freshman whose star has been rising during Big East play, tallied 14 points, seven rebounds, six assists and a season-high five steals.
“Every practice he tells us to get into those passing lanes and get those passes,” Eads said. “(Against) Cincinnati (when Hall recorded 17 steals), you’ve seen all of it, those steals, we always get them. We work on those passes and steals every time.”
This has been the Pirates’ M.O. throughout the particularly strong season they’ve been enjoying. They haven’t blown teams away on offense, they’re an average rebounding outfit and even on defense, they’re allowing a fairly high effective field goal percentage (48.2%). But they turn their opponents over on 30.2% of possessions, 15th in D1 women’s basketball, contributing to a top-40 defensive efficiency ranking on BartTorvik.com.
Everyone who sees the floor for Seton Hall has bought in on being ballhawks. Center Yaya Lops poked one free in the first quarter, and guard Amari Wright and reserve Ja’Kahla Craft each finished with three steals. The Pirates deployed a 2-1-2 half-court press at several points Wednesday and all five players on the court were committed to their jobs.
When it isn’t a pure steal, the Pirates’ active hands are still causing chaos. Early on, Catalon was defending a Butler player in the corner, perfectly predicted when she’d attempt to kick it out to the wing and not only got a deflection, but batted the ball off her and out of bounds. Hall ball.
I asked Catalon how much of their penchant for steals is chalked up to instinct and how much is practice or coaching.
“It’s like a 50-50, it’s a little bit of both,” Catalon said. “I think I’m really good with just knowing where to be on the court, my instincts are pretty good but also in practice we always work on positioning and we take a lot of pride in our positions on the court.”
Seton Hall, of course, is glad to have Catalon back in the fold after she missed about six weeks due to an ankle injury. She made her return last Saturday against St. John’s and scored 12 points – and grabbed another six steals.
“You know, being on the sideline most definitely sucks,” Catalon said, “but I embraced it, I learned from the sideline and now that I’m back on the court I’m just very happy and I’m not taking nothing for granted and just giving it my all.”
“She always has our back,” Eads said. “She always takes these charges, these hustle plays. She always has our back. So to have her back, it makes you feel good because we always go out every day and we’re a family.”
It’s worth noting that Eads, a point guard from Florida, entered the starting lineup in December when Shailyn Pinkney was lost to a knee injury. Catalon got hurt about a week later, so this ideal five of Eads, Catalon, Wright, Lops and Faith Masonius have only started five games together.
The Pirates endured these injuries to go 15-5 and 7-2 in the Big East thus far, and now that they’re healthier their arrow is only pointing up. Wednesday was the first time they cracked 70 points in regulation since Dec. 6, as they had one of their best offensive halves of the conference season by shooting 58.1 percent after halftime.
Their next two games loom large. For their final two-game road trip of the season, the Pirates head to fifth-place DePaul and then second-place Creighton, who beat them by eight in South Orange earlier this month.
Will the season Seton Hall has put together be enough for the program’s first NCAA Tournament bid since 2016? Amazingly, it might not. There aren’t as many reputable women’s bracketologists as there are on the men’s side, but those who do cover the women are projecting a two-bid Big East, with Seton Hall not yet on the periphery of the conversation. The NET doesn’t care much for what the Pirates have accomplished; they were ranked No. 75 entering the Butler game and only moved up to No. 71 Wednesday.
Eads told us it was “very important” to break the program’s tourney drought, a goal the players have talked about throughout the season.
“We have the team to get there and we go at it every day and make sure we’re going to get in that tournament,” she added.
“We just got to win the games that we know we can win,” Catalon said. “And coming back, it means a lot, especially because I get to help contribute to my team on the court getting these wins. We’re in a very good position right now in the Big East standings and I just hope to keep this momentum that we have and keep moving forward with it.”
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Hello, happy Thursday and thanks as always for stopping by.
Princeton is more likely to get into the field – even as an at-large if the Tigers don’t win the Ivy – but the Seton Hall women may have the most intriguing at-large case of any New Jersey D1 program, men or women. The Pirates don’t have any Quad 1 wins, but to be fair that’s a lot harder to do in the women’s game because the definitions are different. Winning at Creighton on Feb. 5 would qualify as Quad 1.
There weren’t many other games around Jersey yesterday, but let’s quickly clean the glass:
If November and December were all about Dylan Harper, Ace Bailey stole the spotlight during the month of January. Bailey has been a scoring machine, with his third 30-point game of the month coming in a 37-point effort last night at Northwestern. He had a career-best five 3-pointers, and crucially, his free-throw shooting has steadied out over the last five or six games (6-for-6 last night, 8-for-8 vs. Michigan State).
Best of all for Rutgers, this finally came in a win. Bailey’s 39-point explosion at Indiana and 30 points at Penn State on MLK Day did not. But the Scarlet Knights were the better team on the floor Wednesday and led the entire second half, holding Northwestern without a field goal for more than six minutes as they clinched a 79-72 win with Harper out. It marks Rutgers’ second Quad 1 win of the season, and they’ve got three more in a row coming up: home vs. Michigan, home vs. Illinois, at Maryland. As I mentioned Tuesday, the schedule lightens up considerably after that, so RU needs to get its punches in now to keep its dwindling tourney hopes alive.Speaking of Maryland, the Terps recently announced a “philanthropic commitment in support of Maryland Men’s Basketball” worth $10 million from an anonymous donor. Kevin Willard described the donor as his dinner buddy when the team is on the road. I liked this comment from Bryan DeNovellis:
