Kadary Richmond goes up for two of his 23 points as Seton Hall upset No. 5 UConn Wednesday. (Photo by Bob Dea/Daly Dose Of Hoops)
By Jason Guerette (@JPGuerette)
There was a point in the all-time series between UConn and Seton Hall where the Pirates didn't win — anywhere — for a decade. Coming into tonight's showdown in Newark, the Huskies looked every bit the fifth-ranked team in the nation that they were, at 10-1 with their only loss to Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse by four points, and ranked wins over Texas, North Carolina, and Gonzaga.
Suffice it to say that, even with the Pirates coming off a great performance in their last game against Missouri, even the most optimistic of Seton Hall fans probably figured tonight would go UConn's way.
Forty minutes later, it was Seton Hall standing on top after a 75-60 waxing at the Prudential Center that revved up the home crowd into a frenzy, and gave Shaheen Holloway's team a signature victory to open up Big East play in addition to giving the Pirates a third straight win over UConn at home.
Here are 5 Thoughts from the Rock:
1. 3 Michelin Stars for Kooks
After the game, Kadary Richmond was asked why he has saved some of his best performances for the Huskies. The senior guard said that he approaches UConn the way he approaches every game, a diplomatic answer from a veteran player.
But there isn't a doubt that he's done some of his best work against the Huskies, particularly at home, where he scored 27 points in an overtime victory his first season at The Hall, had a double-double with 18 points and 10 boards last season in taking down a Dan Hurley-less team, and tonight poured in 23 points to go along with six rebounds, five assists, only two turnovers, and a whopping EIGHT steals.
In short, Kooks whipped up a five-course meal for the Pirates tonight, one that didn't digest well for the visitors.
“Kadary’s a tough cover,” Hurley said after a loss the UConn head coach frequently described as embarrassing for his team. “We've been dealing with him for an eternity. If he sees no bodies in driving gaps, and he plays in space at his size, with what he can do downhill at the rim, he's as good as there is at his size with the ball.”
Indeed, Richmond reached deep into his considerable bag of tricks tonight to drive the basketball inside and score once he got there. Ball fakes, hesitations, double clutches, going at players, dipping around them, it was all there on display tonight.
Dre Davis, who ended up as the Pirates' second-leading scorer with 17 points tonight after a big second half, also described what it's like to have that skill on the Seton Hall side of the floor.
“There (are) very few players of Kadary's caliber,” Davis added. “He's huge for our team. Him getting downhill like that opens everything else up for us, and he's very hard to stop from getting downhill.”
2. Creative Writing 101
Richmond did a lot of it himself, but he had some help. Dylan Addae-Wusu (nine points) and Al-Amir Dawes (11 points) also were tasked with driving the basketball tonight, and with the Huskies’ size inside, particularly 7-foot-2 Donovan Clingan, they had to get creative to achieve their goals.
As a result, we saw some nifty and shifty stuff from all three Seton Hall ball handlers tonight, and as the wingmen with Richmond in Seton Hall's starting backcourt, when both contribute, the Pirates are at their best.
It's Addae-Wusu who I'd like to highlight here as well. The St. John's transfer was really struggling to find his stride as a Pirate, but the last couple of games have been his best, with a 20-point, six-rebound, six-assist beauty of a box score against Mizzou last time out, and shining with his defense in a supporting role this evening.
“I’m just getting him to play basketball,” Holloway said after the game. “He was thinking too much, he was trying to fit in, he was trying to figure out how he could fit in with this team. And then I put it on the players. I said, ‘listen, this is your brother, he’s here, he’s struggling, you gotta build him up.’ And I thought in the last week, we’ve been doing that. He’s come out and he’s just playing basketball, but the one thing with Dylan you gotta understand is him scoring 20 points is a bonus. I’m not saying he can’t, but I want his hustle, I want his grit, his toughness, I want his energy. And the team feeds off that, alright? It’s contagious.”
If this can be the new Dylan Addae-Wusu going forward, good things will follow for Seton Hall.
3. Cling Of The Huskies
Donovan Clingan is UConn's best player, and he had to sit for a spell in the first half with some foul trouble. But in the second half, he came down awkwardly after picking up his third foul, and missed the rest of the game with a sprained ankle.
It changed the entire tenor of the matchup. Without their seven-footer on defense, the Pirates were able to attack the rim much easier on offense. But just as big was Clingan's role on the other side of the ball, and not having UConn’s centerpiece made pretty much everything the Huskies tried to do with the basketball much harder.
“They didn't have many answers for Donovan,” Hurley said. “He had 14 points in 13-and-a-half minutes, and we would have kept throwing it in there (to him). It not only hurt us from a low post scoring perspective, but he's also in a lot of the things that we run. He's a really good passer at the top of the key when teams are switching and we're looking for slips and things. So it hurt us, and then obviously, it killed our rim defense too, because we were pathetic at the rim.”
The Pirates wanted to attack Clingan as part of their game plan, and if the big man had been able to stay on the floor, who knows what his foul situation would have been by the end of the game, or how much success Seton Hall would have had inside. But watching the Huskies with Clingan, and then without, I would argue that not having him on offense was even more damaging to UConn in this game. Credit to the Pirates for taking full advantage in their biggest win of the season.
4. Keep It Simple, Stupid
Everyone should know the anagram KISS at this point. Sometimes, the simple way is the best way, the way with the least amount of complications on the way to success.
That was Holloway's approach tonight as well.
“I thought we came out and didn’t try to overdo it,” the head coach said. “We had a short prep, we played Sunday so we couldn’t do too much on Monday, and then we had a solid day yesterday. We just came in and just tried to take away the three, and in the beginning of the game, they got the lead early because they hit a couple threes. Then once we did that, from there, we just kind of played basketball. I did a little thing differently today with some of the mismatches so Kooks could go one-on-one, especially with their coverage.”
He went on to say that helped the Pirates play loose in the game. With the three-point line taken away after a rocky start, and Clingan absent for most of the second half, Seton Hall turned up its defense, used 17 UConn turnovers to score 17 points to fuel its offense (eight of which were on Richmond steals), and ran away from the fifth-ranked Huskies.
5. Welcome to the Big East
Hurley said tonight that Seton Hall “punked us there in Big East Conference fashion.” The league has long been identified with grit, with East Coast toughness, with intense battles between local rivals. Tonight was an example of what can happen when one team is far enough off their game in a league when there are no easy games.
Holloway was also asked about the magnitude of the victory, and essentially said that it's brand new year now that conference play has begun.
“It’s Big East basketball,” he said. “I watched games last night, we see what Providence did to Marquette. It’s Big East basketball. I told my guys, this is a different season. This is part two. The things that we did the first half of the season, that’s non-conference, let’s learn from them. Those are all lessons we could learn from. We took a lot from there.”
The Pirates now jump into the Huskies' shoes and go on the road to play Xavier, fueled by the knowledge that they have to take their game to another level to succeed in the Big East, having delivered that to UConn firsthand tonight. I think we can say that you feel much better about Seton Hall entering league play at this point than a couple weeks ago when the team was still trying to gel, dropping some tough games to some good opponents.
Holloway has continually said the team was a work in progress throughout non-conference play. But tonight was a sign that that work in progress is beginning to work itself out.
“I’ll be honest with you guys, we lost some games that I thought we should have won,” the coach said. “And the reason why I’m still excited about this team is we’re still not playing the way I think we could play. That’s why I said a couple weeks ago, and I’ll say it again: Trust me, we could still get a lot better. That’s why I’m still optimistic about the season and about the team. And we’ve still got a long way to go.”
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