JP's 5 Thoughts: Seton Hall gets worked over on boards, swept by DePaul

Quincy McKnight led Seton Hall with 25 points and nine assists, but Pirates were outrebounded and outmatched Saturday night, falling to DePaul for second time in as many weeks. (Photo by Bob Dea/Daly Dose Of Hoops)

By Jason Guerette (@JPGuerette)

NEWARK, NJ -- Coming into conference play with wins over Kentucky, Miami and Maryland, Seton Hall was riding high. They then beat St. John's and Xavier to start Big East play, including a road win in Cincinnati. Things were going smoothly.

But oh, have times changed. A close loss at DePaul was followed by a close win at home over Butler, but a close defeat at Marquette and a sloppy loss at Providence proved a prelude to Saturday night in Newark, a damaging 97-93 loss at home to the Blue Demons that marked the second-ever time the Pirates had been swept by them and the first time DePaul had swept anyone in the Big East since 2015. It was also the most points the Pirates had ever allowed at home under head coach Kevin Willard, and the most they've allowed in a home game under any coach dating back to 2006.

Here are the thoughts from a rough night at the Rock:

1. Windexed

This game came down to one enormous statistic: rebounding.

DePaul absolutely destroyed the Pirates on the boards, finishing with a 42-19 edge that felt like it was 82-19. Sandro Mamukelashvili, who finished with a double-double of 12 points and 10 boards, grabbed more than half of the Hall's caroms for the game. This led to a whopping 25-8 edge in second-chance points, and doomed the Pirates, whose offense operated at an excellent efficiency for most of the night.

Willard wasn't pleased.

"That happened to us in the first game (against DePaul), and it happened again tonight," Willard said. "We let them get in the lane a little bit too much, whether it was dribble penetration or coming off screens. If you step up to help, it kind of gets you out of rebounding position. Sandro did a great job fighting all night, but we're letting guys get in the lane too much and it's putting pressure on our (other) guys."

The Pirates are not a great rebounding team this year -- losing a walking double-double in Angel Delgado was never going to be without its growing pains -- but Seton Hall's absolutely better than what they showed tonight. All of the players who were made available said that it was the first thing Willard mentioned in the locker room after the game. Next to Mamu's 10, only Myles Powell had more than two rebounds. 

What Willard said about denying the ball going into the paint better definitely holds water, but at the same time, other players just need to get in there and scrap because 54-percent shooting, 93-point nights just won't happen that often to keep them in games like it did tonight.

2. A Seven-Foot-Two Answer?

So, how to fix the rebounding woes?

Tonight, shot-blocker Romaro Gill missed his fifth game with an ankle injury, although he did dress tonight and warm up for the Pirates. He should be back after the upcoming bye week against Villanova, and according to a couple different sources, that could help cure what ails the Hall.

"Honestly, we haven't been rebounding the ball in practice, either, without 'Big Ro,'" Quincy McKnight said after the game. "He started to play so well, blocking shots and rebounding the ball for us, he changed our defense so much. When he went down, we had a little slip on defense."

Willard echoed that the Pirates are looking forward to getting his presence back on the floor as well. While a shot-blocking presence is usually a big thing to have, and Gill definitely has had a pretty big impact at times this year, the aforementioned points made above are more of a pressing issue. If the Pirates don't allow the ball to get into the lane, then a shot-blocker won't see a ton of chances to block shots. But a shot-blocker can cover up for some mistakes in that regard, and with the other bigs in foul trouble tonight, this loss is a game where Gill was missed.

3. The Good With The Bad

The final result tonight was discouraging for obvious reasons, but one of those is because the first half of this game was easily the Pirates' best first half on offense in Big East play, building off a similar start to the game at Providence that preceded it. They shot 57 percent from the field, and made six of eleven from three-point range, led by a 4-for-5 showing from Myles Cale. They also committed only five turnovers, which is their best showing in a Big East first half, and the biggest culprit in their slow starts to conference games this year overall.

Unfortunately, the defense left a lot to be desired, and that was a trend that continued the rest of the way. DePaul ended up with 32 free throw attempts thanks to all that offensive rebounding and working the ball inside, and made 29 of those, numbers that are hard to come by as they took advantage of the opportunities given to them.

4. Second Fiddle(s)

DePaul keyed on Myles Powell like everyone does, but after being frustrated in Providence, he had help tonight. Cale finished with 19 points on 7-for-11 shooting and 5-of-7 from deep, putting up big numbers in the first half by taking advantage of open looks when DePaul focused on Powell.

McKnight, meanwhile, led the charge in the second half, scoring 16 of his game-high 25 after halftime. He made nine of eleven attempts from the field, and also dished out nine assists against two turnovers, one of his best games as a Pirate on the offensive end.

Powell is an amazing scorer who can go off for 25 or more points at any time -- heck, he had 24 tonight, plus six assists, on 16 shots from the floor -- but all great players have to have help, and if McKnight and Cale in particular can do what they did tonight more going forward, it will help the Pirates take some pressure off Powell to do it all.

5. Circle The Wagons

Seton Hall enters its bye week this week by dropping four of five, and it's something I don't think anyone expected, especially due to being swept by DePaul. A game at Villanova looms out of the seven-day break as well, and we need not say more about the historic struggles Seton Hall has gone through on the Main Line.

This is an opportunity for the team to do something they had to do pretty much every season for the last few years: Come together as a unit. The bulk of that falls on veterans Powell and Michael Nzei, the two returners who played major minutes the last two seasons.

"We have to find it in ourselves to pull it together and get back on our feet," Powell said afterwards. "We've faced adversity before -- my freshman year, we were 3-7 (in the Big East), and then last year, we lost four in a row and found ourselves with our backs against the wall -- in the past, we never let our heads drag. We came together as brothers, as teammates, and we took it upon ourselves to win."

There comes a point in every team's season where there is a fork in the road. The last three years, the Pirates chose the right path, and they rebounded from their struggles to make it to the NCAA Tournament. The question is, can this team do the same? Realistically, Seton Hall now has to sweep one of the three remaining opponents it has not seen yet (Villanova, Creighton or Georgetown), and then perhaps pick off either Marquette or Villanova at home in late February/early March, not to mention defend its home court fiercely.

Going into conference play, we said a 10-8 Big East record should get the job done for a fourth-straight NCAA berth. To reach that mark requires a 7-4 slate the rest of the way, something that is doable, but only if the Pirates choose the proverbial correct direction at the fork in their season, which feels like it has arrived.