Sandro Mamukelashvili was unsung hero for Seton Hall Saturday, steering Pirates through foul trouble en route to first win for program at Villanova since 1994. (Photo by Bob Dea/Daly Dose Of Hoops)
PHILADELPHIA — An exorcism.
That was the terminology with which Jerry Carino, one of the elder statesmen among the Seton Hall media contingent, described the Pirates’ thrilling 70-64 victory over Villanova Saturday afternoon, the first for the program in the City of Brotherly Love since February 1994, when Carino was still a junior at Seton Hall.
The workmanlike tenor reflected within the victory — Seton Hall’s eighth Quadrant I win of the season and third against a team ranked in the Top 15 — was symbolic of the manner in which the 12th-ranked Pirates (18-5, 10-1 Big East) have operated throughout the year. After opening up a 10-point lead midway through the first half and then losing it after Villanova, the No. 10 team in the nation, held it to just two field goals over the final 10:37 of the opening stanza, Seton Hall punched back. Six unanswered points out of the intermission tipped the scales back into the visitors’ favor, with the lead being shifted for good shortly thereafter when a Myles Powell basket put the Pirates ahead by a 40-38 margin. Later in the second half, with both Powell and Quincy McKnight hindered by foul trouble, Sandro Mamukelashvili made valuable plays and timely baskets to fend off the Wildcats multiple times down the stretch, ultimately ending the much-ballyhooed losing streak in the nation’s fifth-largest city at 17 games and 26 years.
Of greater significance is the fact that Seton Hall now enjoys a three-game cushion in the Big East standings, with only seven conference tilts remaining on the schedule, the next coming Wednesday at home against Creighton. We’ll delve further into what this means for the Pirates, now the unquestioned favorite going into Madison Square Garden next month, in our handful of takeaways from a monumental milestone matinee:
1) Another master prescription.
Kevin Willard, described by CBS Sports college basketball insider Jon Rothstein as making more adjustments than a chiropractor, saw his game plan carried out perfectly by his players. It began with starting Myles Cale in place of Jared Rhoden — who later came off the bench to post nine points and 11 rebounds — and continued by shifting Mamukelashvili onto Villanova’s Saddiq Bey, a matchup that played more into Seton Hall’s favor as the game went on and Powell and McKnight were relegated to the bench due to accumulating four fouls apiece.
“That’s what makes them a great team,” Jay Wright said of the multifaceted attack his Wildcats were unable to fully contain. “It’s not just Myles Powell, and Myles Powell wouldn’t be getting the numbers that he gets if the other team didn’t respect the other guys. We tried to shut him down a little bit, and when you do that, other guys get loose. McKnight, when he (Powell) wasn’t in the game, was outstanding.”
“I had so much confidence in that group out there because Sandro was out there,” Willard reflected, going so far as to call Mamukelashvili a security blanket for the Pirates, but also praising Powell’s coaching instincts taking over from his perch on the bench. “It just shows you what type of player and person Myles Powell is. The whole time, he was calling plays and he was telling the guys what to do. It’s just the type of leadership that he has. He has such great leadership at all times, and he was really instrumental in how that went, even though he wasn’t out there.”
2) Reynolds Wrap
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Shavar Reynolds did something integral to Saturday’s win that will get overlooked in the final numbers. With just over eight minutes gone by in the second half, the former walk-on made yet another of the hustle plays for which he has come to be defined, saving a loose ball before threading the needle along the left sideline, staying in bounds before draining a 3-pointer that, at the time, extended Seton Hall’s lead to five points and afforded the Pirates the first of many chances to exhale.
“Shavar was awesome,” Willard gushed, also exuding his floor general for his defense on Villanova point guard Collin Gillespie. “He made it very hard for Collin to get into a groove. Our whole key was just trying to keep him off balance, and I thought Shavar and Q were just great all night.”
“He helped them last year,” Wright reminisced of Reynolds. “He’s got great toughness and intelligence. They’ve got guys like that who are older, and when you’ve got guys coming off the bench that are juniors, you’ve got a really good team. He could start for most teams in our conference.”
3) Mamu’s Renaissance
Mamukelashvili, in just his fourth game since returning from a fractured wrist that cost the junior seven weeks earlier this season, put on arguably his best performance since coming back from his injury. The 6-foot-10 X-factor scored 17 points and added eight rebounds, not to mention knocking down a pair of second half 3-pointers that Wright deemed to be daggers in the final outcome.
“It felt good,” Powell said of watching Mamukelashvili’s continued emergence. “When you watch one of your brothers shining, you feel good. That’s the best part about this group. It doesn’t matter who’s doing it or how it’s getting done, we just want to win.”
“I felt like I was struggling these last couple of games,” Mamu admitted. “I feel like Coach is always telling me to shoot, too, so I just came out there with the mindset that I’m going to shoot the ball if I’m open, and once I see one or two go in, then I feel more comfortable.”
4) Milestone Myles
The first points of the second half were significant for Powell, who broke the seal after the intermission with a 3-pointer. The triple, the 329th of the Trenton native’s career, set a new school record for career 3-point field goals, surpassing Jeremy Hazell. Coincidentally, Powell will pass Hazell again with his next 25 points, overtaking the great Pirate marksman for third on the program’s all-time scoring list. But in typical Powell fashion, the likely All-American deflected any talk of his personal accomplishments, choosing instead to designate the time he missed last month as more meaningful to the long-term vision and identity of his teammates.
“Me getting that concussion was the best thing that happened to this team,” an introspective Powell observed, using his absence for the seminal victory over Maryland last month as an example of how Seton Hall has grown. “Ever since then, everyone’s just been stepping up and doing what we need them to do, and now we need to keep rolling. Everybody’s locked in, bought in, and I feel like that’s the best part about this group. Everybody wants to win. That’s what’s going on right now.”
5) The Big Picture
Revealed as a No. 3 seed in the NCAA’s announcement of the prospective top 16 seeds before the game, Seton Hall’s standing today is a far cry from where the program was 12 months ago, guarding a position on the bubble with its collective life before a late surge to what became the Pirates’ fourth consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance. The need to keep a team grounded when visions of grandeur appear is a fine line to walk, but Willard is erring as far on the side of caution as humanly possible while the comparisons to the national runner-up season of 1988-89 grow larger in the blue-and-white mirrors in and around South Orange.
“You guys know me: If we had lost, I’d have been like, ‘Alright, we got cheesesteaks on the bus,” he quipped. “It would have been 27 years, and eventually, it might have been 28 years. It’s more about this team and living in the present. Everyone always says about ‘89. This is six straight road wins, so I’m more concerned about this team right now and what they’re doing. More than anything, I’m just enjoying living in this moment and enjoying being able to coach this group.”
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