Seton Hall women’s shooting slump leaves Tony Bozzella at a loss
Seton Hall was flying high after trouncing then-No. 23 UNLV on Dec. 16. The Big East season has been another story.
SOUTH ORANGE – There was a stretch Wednesday night, after Azana Baines hit her fourth bucket of the game to put Seton Hall ahead 19-18, that the Pirates hit the worst kind of shooting rut. The kind where nothing you try seems to be the solution, whether under the basket, from the mid-range, from the arc, in transition. Doesn’t matter. The shots are always just a bit off.
Seton Hall missed 14 of its next 15 attempts in a dry spell that spanned the second and third quarters. The Pirates’ defense kept them in the game, as Villanova struggled through its own off-night, with airballed three after airballed three. Yet even when Baines scored again in the third quarter and the score was 26-23 Villanova, Seton Hall couldn’t cash in.
The Pirates failed to take a lead throughout the second half and a late push came up short in a 50-45 loss, the team’s third straight lackluster offensive performance.
“I’m at a loss, to be honest with you,” Pirates coach Tony Bozzella said postgame. “I’ve done this for 30 years. I know a lot of people are happy about us losing, especially in the … around. But that’s OK. We’ll remember this in the long run. It’s just disappointing to shoot 29 percent. It’s just hard to believe to be honest with you.”
Seton Hall was flying high after trouncing then-No. 23 UNLV 84-54 on Dec. 16 to close out the nonconference portion of its schedule. The Big East season has been another story. The Pirates surmounted a 23-2 deficit to beat Georgetown 57-49 before Christmas, then lost 51-46 and 50-45 at home to Providence and Villanova, respectively.
In each of the three league games, Seton Hall failed to make more than 18 shots from the floor. The two losses saw ugly shooting rates of 23.4 and 29 percent.
“You just can’t shoot the numbers we shoot and win,” Bozzella said. “We held them to 50 points … We’ve held these two teams to 50 and 51 points and lost. That’s almost impossible to do.”
Bozzella wasn’t necessarily overjoyed with his team’s defense, either, but there’s something to be said for forcing Villanova into 15 turnovers when it averaged 9.3 coming in. Fifty was the Wildcats’ season-low point total, and Amari Wright helped hold Villanova star Lucy Olsen to just 10.
“They had 15 turnovers, I thought we did a great job with that, but we scored a measly four points off it,” Bozzella said. “You’re supposed to score at least 1.5 points for every turnover you have. And look at the last game: We forced 23 turnovers on Providence, we scored 13 points. So even if we scored one point for every turnover, we’d have 23 points, we would’ve had 10 more points against Providence and win. If we scored one point for every turnover here, we would have had 11 more points and we would’ve won.
“We just do a terrible job of stealing the ball and scoring, and we went through a drill (Tuesday) on it for a good 10 or 15 minutes. It didn’t translate here at all.”
Baines powered the Pirates with 21 points and seven rebounds, but no other player scored more than five. The injury absence of starter Kae Satterfield was keenly felt here; she hurt her ankle in practice the day before the Providence game and it’s uncertain when she’ll return to the lineup.
“We do miss her,” Bozzella said. “… I don’t know. I’m not being flippant about it, to be blunt. You know me, I’ll tell you anything. I have no idea where she’s at. I was hoping, but you know. I know she wants to get back and play.”
Satterfield is Seton Hall’s third-leading scorer at 8.6 ppg, and she makes a fantastic 65.1 percent of her 2-point shots. Second-leading scorer Micah Gray (13.9 ppg) went 1-for-13 against Villanova.
Savannah Catalon is a viable scoring option off the bench, but foul trouble limited her to five points Wednesday.
“Our bench got outscored 25-12 and we thought that was a strength of ours,” Bozzella said. “Savannah gets in foul trouble. She’s got to learn she can’t commit a couple of those fouls. We need her out there. She plays 11 minutes because she has four fouls. It’s frustrating.”
When Bozzella is this frustrated, eyes should open and ears should perk up. Bozzella has been through the Big East ringer nearly a dozen times and has more than 500 coaching wins to his name. He knows the path ahead, with a game at Butler before the Pirates host ranked Marquette, will be daunting even if they’re at full strength.
“We’re gonna play Saturday at Butler, and they’re literally gonna have five players just sit in the paint and go like this.” He put his hands up meekly above his head. “That’s all they’re gonna do, because look at what we’re doing, shoot.”
If Seton Hall can end its collective shooting slump here and now, it would go a long way toward stabilizing the ship and fortifying NCAA Tournament hopes. The Pirates ranked 39th in the NET entering Wednesday, though as of this writing, the numbers haven’t been updated to reflect Wednesday’s games and reposition Seton Hall somewhere lower.
The resume is good, but the UNLV win is the only notable one. Taking down Marquette or St. John’s or Creighton can make it a different story.
“One day we’ll just get clicking and we’ll make a ton of shots that game and we’ll play well. Probably against UConn,” Bozzella quipped.
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Happy Thursday, and thanks for stopping by. Glad to get out to my first game of 2024 last night; here’s to many more to come.
Time to clean the glass, and we absolutely have to start with the Seton Hall men:
I need to make it up to Providence at some point in my career. The environment is supposed to be one of the best in the sport, and I figure I’d enjoy it so long as someone’s beer doesn’t end up on my laptop. You know who really enjoys visiting Providence? Seton Hall, which has now won at the AMP in back-to-back seasons.
I only followed along with this game online while 95% of my attention was on the women’s game in front of me, so don’t expect tons of keen insight. That said, three quick takeaways. 1. Seton Hall never led by more than eight, and Providence took a series of one-point leads down the stretch. It takes stones to win that kind of game in that kind of environment. Al-Amir Dawes hitting a dagger to make it 55-51 despite having another subpar shooting night can’t be overlooked. 2. Speaking of threes, the Pirates made seven, their most since a 10-for-23 performance against Missouri. When they beat UConn I said they could more or less forget the arc, but even if they made six triples a game the rest of the way – just above their current average of 5.3 – it’s enough to keep opposing defenses honest. 3. This is Dylan Addae-Wusu’s moment. He had 12 points and a season-high 11 rebounds. His toughness in the backcourt is exactly what Shaheen Holloway wants out of him during Big East season. I’d love to see him get to the line more, building on yesterday’s 4-for-4 performance there.
Derek Simpson put Rutgers on his back Wednesday and went for 23 points and eight rebounds, but the Scarlet Knights are 0-2 in the Big Ten after a 76-72 loss at Ohio State. Jamison Battle’s 5-for-5 start from 3-point range had me second-guessing whether this Rutgers defense was so hot in the first place. They clamped down better in the second half, but this isn’t a team that can spot a Big Ten opponent a 17-point lead and expect to rally, on the road no less. Cliff Omoruyi scored seven points on 2-of-6 shooting.
Back on the women’s side, Rutgers dropped a heartbreaker Tuesday at Purdue, 77-76, to fall to 0-3 in the Big Ten. Purdue led basically the entire way, but Rutgers closed an 11-point gap to one in the final five and a half minutes, and that was missing Kaylene Smikle and Antonia Bates. Destiny Adams went 11-for-11 at the foul line en route to 23 points and 13 boards. I wish I could be in Piscataway Friday night to watch Caitlin Clark and No. 4 Iowa take on Rutgers, but if the Scarlet Knights don’t have Smikle it could get out of hand fast.