What Seton Hall needs out of its offseason to help a threadbare roster
On Budd Clark, two other incoming transfers and what we might expect next given the Pirates' situation.
A lot.
The Seton Hall Pirates need a lot more in order to build a 2025-26 roster essentially from scratch. And if I left it there, without diving into the next 1,500 words, the overarching point would be clear enough.
Today is April 23, the transfer portal window just closed at midnight last night and Seton Hall still has seven open scholarships to get to 13. To reiterate previous clarifications, this closure doesn’t mean players are out of time to sign with new schools; the deadline was only for entering the portal.
And here’s the list of 2024-25 Pirates who entered the portal, alphabetically by last name: Prince Aligbe, Isaiah Coleman, Garwey Dual, Zion Harmon, Chaunce Jenkins, Scotty Middleton, Emmanuel Okorafor, Yacine Toumi, David Tubek and Gus Yalden.
Coleman graduated up to Oklahoma State, while Middleton will ply his wares at Tulane; Dual, who looked rough for much of the season before finding a groove late, is going to McNeese; and Jenkins really doesn’t have eligibility remaining, but he portaled anyway on the off-chance that a forthcoming court ruling will prevent the NCAA from enforcing its five-year window for eligibility.
If you’re a Seton Hall fan whose preference was to torch the entire 2024-25 roster and start over, I respect that. Still, getting some continuity with one or two of these guys, an Aligbe, a Middleton, could have done a world of good.
Seton Hall’s roster at present consists of three holdovers from last season and three transfers:
Guards: Adam “Budd” Clark, T.J. Simpkins, Jahseem Felton
Forwards/wings: Josh Rivera
Bigs: Godswill Erheriene, Assane Mbaye
And while each of those transfers, to me, holds more promise than last year’s collection that largely failed to work out, there remains a stark contrast when you put this up against the big boys of the Big East.
Think about who UConn has coming back, and then add a pair of productive transfer guards in Silas Demary Jr. and Malachi Smith. St. John’s returns Zuby Ejiofor and Rick Pitino has already been able to add Providence star Bryce Hopkins, former five-star point guard Ian Jackson and another highly touted transfer in Joson Sanon.
The NIL disparities have not gone away just because Seton Hall fans endured one painful season. St. John’s is believed to be spending at least $10 million in NIL this year, and UConn has cleared $8 million. (Kudos to CBS Sports journalist Matt Norlander for doing the damn thing, going out and getting these numbers.)
The upcoming House v. NCAA settlement (fun fact: not a case between the House of Representatives and the NCAA, but a suit brought by ex-Arizona State swimmer named Grant House) is expected to introduce revenue sharing with athletes for the first time, capped at $20.5 million school-wide for the first year. In men’s basketball, this could advantage the Big East schools that don’t have football teams to fund. But somehow, we aren’t there yet. Somehow, we’re still waiting for the judge to make her final ruling.
And remember, even when revenue sharing goes into effect, NIL won’t just disappear. (It’s said that every deal greater than $600 will be scrutinized by a clearinghouse, so maybe some phony “NIL” deals don’t get through. But the wealthiest programs will always be one step ahead.)
Sorry for that left turn into the financial and legal weeds. I wanted to write about basketball one more time this morning. I wanted to tell you about Budd Clark.
Promise at point guard
When Jordan Derkack was dominating the Northeast Conference in 2023-24, Clark was the Robin to his Batman in the Merrimack backcourt. Clark started all 33 games for the Warriors that year and averaged 13.4 points, 3.9 assists and 2.5 steals, winning the NEC Rookie of the Year award.
Derkack transferred to Rutgers off the momentum of winning NEC Player of the Year and Defensive POY, but that wasn’t all that changed. Merrimack made its own move, up to the MAAC. This was a decent rise in competition, from the lowest-ranked D1 conference by KenPom to one in the mid-20s. And all Clark did was increase his own production, both per game and per 40 minutes, while guiding Merrimack to second place in the league.
The knocks on Clark are that he’s 5-foot-10 and can’t shoot the three. OK. I’ll still take the guy who just put up 19.8 points, 6.0 assists and 2.7 steals per game and find the right pieces to put around him. Especially if I’m Shaheen Holloway, lover of the two-way guard. Especially if I’m Holloway with what I have right now.
As you’ll see in the highlight reel below, Clark can score on ball screens, on the drive and in isolation. His career assist-turnover ratio is a bit shy of 2:1. And his defense will be crucial. I recommend Sam Federman’s story about Clark that opens with a scene-setter about the guard being able to simply “take the ball” at will in high school.
T.J. Simpkins averaged 14.6 points, 3.8 rebounds, 2.9 assists and 1.6 steals as a part-time starter in his first season at Elon. At 6-foot-4, the Brooklyn native would be Hall’s starting two guard if they had to play a game today.
I know less about Josh Rivera, the most recent transfer to commit, but he’s a New Brunswick native who scored seven points and canned the only three he took in Fordham’s upset of Seton Hall last November. Though he rarely started in 2024-25, Rivera was Fordham’s sixth man and third-leading scorer (10.7 ppg). In one season at Lafayette and two at Fordham, he has been a pretty consistent inside shooter and fine offensive rebounder.
What’s next?
I haven’t seen anyone hammer Seton Hall for this online, so I’ll do the honors:
This program has zero high school commits from the Class of 2025? None whatsoever?
Usually, I like to be the voice of reason and temperance. I can remind you (and myself) that Isaiah Coleman committed to Seton Hall in May 2023. And it isn’t like Seton Hall wasn’t actively recruiting high schoolers this cycle; it’s just that everyone they targeted committed elsewhere.
None of the old standbys are that comprehensive, but I lean toward On3 when I need a recruiting tracker these days. And On3’s list of players the Pirates offered is a mix of five- and high four-star guys they were never going to compete for, plus some local three-stars who went anywhere from UMass to Colorado.
I would keep an eye on New Jersey three-star power forward Naas Hart, whose recruitment appears to be open. Seton Hall is the only power-conference school to have given him an offer, according to his own Instagram.
There is also the international path, one that shouldn’t be overlooked in this era where players are coming from the Adriatics, Italy and even Russia for a year of college basketball before targeting the pros. Ukrainian forward Desmond Yiamu plays for Bayern Munich’s junior team, and maybe the competition isn’t as strong there as American high school basketball, but he’s put up good production while appearing to have a nice knack for the flow of the game. He’s heard from two high-major programs: UCLA and Seton Hall.
All that said, could other guys currently in the portal come out of the woodwork as the options begin to shrink? Absolutely. The fan account @SOrangeJuice also made the astute point that Holloway and his staff aren’t exactly a leaky group, and Clark and Rivera weren’t publicly linked to Seton Hall before their commitments were announced. There’s certainly plenty going on behind the scenes.
Seton Hall needs a third center, badly, even if the plan is to start Erheriene again. Assane Mbaye likely gets a redshirt after not playing in 2024-25, and at 7-foot-2, you’d hope he’s ready to play Emmanuel Okorafor-type minutes next season (while producing more than Okorafor ever did). Still, that almost definitely isn’t enough when it’s time to face Big East competition.
The Pirates need guard depth, even if Clark and Simpkins are their starters. And that obviously goes triple for forwards. If Rivera is a three, I don’t see a four here.
The next several weeks loom large for this program. Seton Hall needs some of everything to complete this roster rebuild. There’s your TL;DR version. The Pirates need a lot; what they’re able to afford is the literal million-dollar question.
………
How about one more Cleaning the Glass for 2024-25? Then I’ll be back next week with the usual season-ending column.
After a bit of a wait, Ace Bailey this morning declared for the NBA Draft. It’s finally, officially the end of the brief Harper-Bailey era at Rutgers, one that will be summed up in two easy words: “What if?”
We’ve also got All-Met Awards this week from the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association. The men’s team is comprised of three St. John’s guys and the rest from Jersey schools: Harper, Bailey, Coleman, Abdi Bashir Jr. and Xaivian Lee. FDU’s Terrence Brown leads the second team and NJIT’s Tariq Francis made the third team. Caden Pierce of Princeton was an honorable mention. The women’s All-Met first team featured Rutgers star Destiny Adams, Seton Hall’s Faith Masonius and FDU’s Teneisia Brown; the only Princeton player on the first through third teams was third-teamer Ashley Chea.
Kiyomi McMiller, interestingly, was not picked here, even as an honorable mention. Once an enthralling five-star prospect, her messy chapter at Rutgers ended with her transferring to Penn State. She did not go far. Rutgers will face McMiller at least once next season.
Today’s Seton Hall overview followed a similar one I wrote about the state of Rutgers last week; if you missed that, here it is.