NEWARK, N.J. — When it rains, it pours. So the saying goes, anyway.
And like the wicked in the book of Genesis, Seton Hall currently finds itself stuck in Noah’s Flood, as the Butler Bulldogs came out firing on all cylinders Wednesday night in Newark, beating the Pirates, 84-54, to deal the home team its eighth straight loss, dropping The Hall to 6-17 overall and 1-11 in the Big East.
Once again, Seton Hall was shorthanded, and this time missing two of its better defenders in Dylan Addae-Wusu and Scotty Middleton, the latter of whom was injured against DePaul on Sunday. Chaunce Jenkins also missed his fifth straight game, so all of that made things even more difficult for the Pirates going in. It would take their best effort to make it a ballgame.
What ended up happening was the exact opposite. Right from the get-go, Butler, who came in under .500 on the season and 2-9 in the Big East, was getting whatever it wanted offensively. Finley Bizjack and Patrick McCaffery led a veritable parade of three-pointers for the Bulldogs, who hit a whopping seven in the first 14 minutes of the ballgame. The vast majority of the shots were wide open, with Seton Hall getting caught late in rotation.
And it never got better in the first 20 minutes, either. No matter where Shaheen Holloway went, no matter who was in the ballgame, the results were the same. The Bulldogs looked like they were at shootaround, and the Pirates couldn’t get any shots to fall to match them, nor get themselves ratcheted up on defense.
At the half, Seton Hall was down by a count of 48-20, having allowed nearly 60 percent shooting, having gotten doubled up on the glass, and decimated 22-8 inside the paint. In a season full of poor starts, this ranked at or near the bottom.
“They scored a lot of points,” a frustrated Holloway said when asked about the first half.
Not even Seton Hall’s full-court press could save it this time, either, as it had a few other times in second halves this season. It did allow for a second half that was competitive, with the Bulldogs’ lead being sliced to 15 points about midway through, but the Pirates couldn’t make a bigger dent in Butler’s enormous advantage.
I asked Holloway about the Pirates’ defense, which he described as “awful” during the course of the question.
“To tell you the truth, I came out tonight trying to play a zone, because I didn’t think the lineup I had could match up with (Butler),” he said. “And the zone was awful, so that’s a bad call by me. Then we got out of the zone, but they were still scoring. There’s a lot of guys that probably wouldn't be playing together if we had a full roster, if we were fully healthy, so there’s guys just not guarding (their) men right now, and that's what it comes down to, guarding your yard.”
“And it’s everybody...getting beat, and then we rotate and we’re scrambling, and they shot the ball great early, which put us in another hole."
In the positive column, Prince Aligbe had yet another solid game, hitting double figures for the seventh time in the last nine games with 17 points. He continues to be a very bright spot recently in a dark season for the Pirates. But the rest of the team struggled, with lead guard Isaiah Coleman again unable to find the bottom of the net in particular, scoring just two points on 1-for-10 shooting.
“(He) and I watched film last night of the last six games,” Holloway said of Coleman. “And I told him a lot of the shots that (he’s) kind of rushing, you're going to get those shots anyway. Today, I saw him pressing a little bit. I saw him rushing some shots, then putting his head down and pressing a little bit, and that kind of dictated his defense. And that’s why I got upset with him. Don’t let it dictate your defense. If you have good shots, shoot them.”
That was the least of the Pirates’ concerns on the night, however. Every team has bad days at the office. This was certainly another one for Seton Hall. But the larger issue for the Pirates is their remaining schedule. Only three of their remaining eight games are against teams at or under .500 in the Big East, at Georgetown (5-7) for their next game on Saturday, and at home against Xavier (6-6) and Villanova (5-6) at the end of the month.
They have to face UConn twice in that span, and play heavyweights Marquette and St. John’s on the road, plus Ryan Kalkbrenner and Creighton at home. If they cannot get their injured players back in the lineup soon, it’s honestly a bit difficult to see a victory in that group.
The answer that coaches always turn to when their team is caught in a near-impossible situation on paper is that they have to battle, and there's some truth to that. Holloway has said that in past press conferences. But for Seton Hall, the Pirates have to come out ready to be gladiators right away, no matter who’s healthy or not. If they have another first half like they did tonight, especially on defense, they won't be able to unsink the ship against the top-flight competition they have coming up in February.
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