5 Thoughts: Seton Hall stuns Creighton with another comeback

Najai Hines’ putback in final seconds capped off 16-point comeback for Seton Hall Sunday against Creighton. (Photo by Gabe Rhodes/Seton Hall Athletics)

By Jason Guerette (@JPGuerette)

NEWARK, N.J. — Another day, another monster Seton Hall comeback.

Down by 16 points after a Creighton haymaker at the start of the second half, the Pirates were looking for answers and looking for a spark. Once that spark was lit, it turned into a fire, and down the stretch, it became an inferno that was capped with a Najai Hines putback with one second left, delivering a 56-54 victory on Sunday at Prudential Center.

Here are the Thoughts from Newark as the Pirates improved to 3-1 in Big East play:

1. Stick-to-it-iveness

An unfortunate early story of this game was that Seton Hall was getting great looks offensively, but maybe half of its misses were balls that just went halfway down and out or had a chance to go in but just plain didn’t.

“I thought we were aggressive in the first half, but we missed a lot of chippies,” Shaheen Holloway said. “If you watch the first half, we were getting the ball at the basket, but we just weren’t finishing.”

There was some of that in the second half as well, but the important thing is that the Pirates stayed the course, and it was that continued aggression that played a huge part in their comeback. Seton Hall went to the free throw line 15 times after halftime, and made 13 of those shots, offsetting a day where it shot just 36 percent from the field overall.

There was even a stretch during the comeback where it stalled a bit, with Seton Hall down between two and four points for an extended stretch as well, and the Pirates didn’t let that faze them.

“We were right there,” Holloway said. “We could have got it down three, down two, down one, and just missed some stuff. But I knew if we kept being aggressive, kept driving, and didn’t let them make threes, I thought that was the difference.”

2. All Fouled Up

The biggest story of the first half aside from the missed layups was that three of the Pirates’ most impactful players weren’t on the floor because of foul trouble. We’ve talked before about Budd Clark picking up early fouls and how that stunts the Pirates’ game plan on both ends of the floor. Unfortunately, it happened again, as the Pirate point guard picked up his second foul just six minutes into the contest. 

What also happened, however, is that both of Seton Hall's bigs — Stephon Payne and Hines — also were saddled with two fouls in the first half. That forced Holloway to play Godswill Erheriene for an extended period of time, and while Erheriene brings a lot of length, he isn’t the physical presence that Payne or Hines is inside.

As a result, Creighton was able to surge ahead on the glass, something head coach Greg McDermott said after the game was a key, using seven offensive rebounds and a 7-2 edge in second-chance points to take a nine-point lead into the break.

Ironically, an offensive rebound against the Bluejays decided the contest (more on that in a second), and the comeback nullifies a lot of the impact of this point, but as Holloway said after the contest, the Pirates shouldn’t have been in the position they were, and one reason why was foul trouble. It’s something to work on for Seton Hall because just like every team, it needs its best players on the floor, not sitting on the bench.

3. Dancing in the Dark

As the venerable Bruce Springsteen once wrote, you can't start a fire without a spark, and with the Pirates down 16 points, they needed something extra from somewhere.

Enter Trey Parker, who had no points in 11 minutes in the first half, playing more with Clark on the bench. The NC State transfer drove hard to the basket on offense, attempting six free throws in the second half alone, and that turned out to be the little spark that kickstarted Seton Hall’s comeback. When all was said and done, he ended up with nine points, four rebounds, two assists, and three fouls drawn that tied him for the team lead with Clark.

Holloway used both Clark and Parker on the floor together down the stretch as well, which he said benefited the North Carolina native.

“When (Trey) is out there by himself, there’s a lot of pressure on him to try and make plays,” Holloway said. “But when he’s out there with Budd, now you’ve got two of them, now it's easy for him to kind of play off Budd and do what he does, drive the ball to the basket. I’ve been trying to tell him I want him to be more aggressive. He’s one of our most athletic guys on the team, by far, but he’s not really showing it. I want him to show it.”

Holloway also mentioned Josh Rivera as another player who gave the Pirates the kick in the pants they needed, and while his overall stats (four points, three rebounds in 13 minutes) may not show it, his plus-16 rating, the second-highest on the team behind Parker, certainly did.

“That group that played (during the comeback) just played with energy,” Holloway said. “We had no life at all, the first group didn’t give us anything, so we made some adjustments. And then once we got into it, the crowd got into it, and the kids fed off that. This is a good win for us.”

4. A “Seton Hall” Shot

Now to the final possession, which was created by the Pirates’ defense forcing back-to-back held balls, the second of which came with about 11 seconds remaining in a one-point game. Faced with nothing but man defense all game, Creighton threw on a 1-3-1 zone, a great adjustment designed to throw Seton Hall off.

“They were really beating us off the dribble,” McDermott said of his decision to go zone. “They had no timeouts, and we thought we could steal a possession.”

However, in a zone defense, it can be tougher to rebound, and that turned out to be what decided the contest. The adjustment did surprise Holloway, but where he went with the ball on the final possession shouldn't surprise anyone. Clark missed a pull-up jumper in the teeth of the zone, but Hines was there on the weak side, stuck it back in while being fouled, and sent the Rock into an uproar.

“The play was for (Budd), to make a play, and for Josh and Najai to be in position to, if he missed, to get a putback,” Holloway said. “I thought Najai did a great job of getting in position and catching it, and keeping it high, not dropping it, and finishing.”

Something else Holloway said about the play, though, echoed another point he’s made all season long, which is that the Pirates need to feed off each other, particularly when it comes to turning defense into offense, something they obviously did in the comeback.

“Guys didn’t care who took the shot,” he said. “We were just playing defense, and playing with energy, getting stops, getting runouts, and when you play like that, good things happen. That’s why I keep telling these guys, ‘stop taking ME shots, take a SETON HALL shot.’ And I thought Budd took a Seton Hall shot, and because he took that shot, our guys were in position to rebound, and that’s the difference.”

If that doesn’t prove a point that the Pirates have to play as a unit to win on both ends, then check out the final box score. Seton Hall had just one player (Elijah Fisher) in double figures, and he had just 10 points, but there were a whopping five other players who had either eight or nine, including Clark, Parker, and Hines.

Team, Team, Team.

5. Pressure Building

Holloway’s style of pressure defense has always been hard to play against dating back to his time at Saint Peter’s, but at Seton Hall, he’s been able to truly unleash it upon The Hall’s opponents this season after not having the depth two seasons ago, then not having the guard play last season. That’s been well documented all year.

But watching the proceedings today, when the Pirates were locked in and connected in their defense, Creighton had a hard time doing anything, much less scoring. It wasn’t the most consistent day they’ve had on that end, as the Bluejays were able to put up points in bunches when Seton Hall was out of system, but when it was on, it was ON.

There was a possession early on in the comeback that stuck with me involving Tajuan Simpkins. He was guarding Creighton’s leading scorer, Josh Dix, and he was so glued to his man with the shot clock winding down that he didn’t even come close to even looking at the basket, let alone, getting in a position to avoid the violation.

That’s to say nothing of the final sequence, where the Pirates forced Creighton to use two timeouts, and almost stole the ball once before the back-to-back jump ball sequences turned into the Hines game-winner.

On a day where there were a whole bunch of basketball alumni in the building, it brought to mind my personal favorite Pirate, Paul Gause. For those who may not remember, Gause was a guy from South Jersey who played for Louis Orr and Bobby Gonzalez. He was undersized at about 5-foot-11, but was an all-state football player in high school, and had both incredible strength and quickness.

He used those physical gifts to play in-your-shorts defense on all comers, and ended up second in program history in career steals (currently third all-time behind Fuquan Edwin and Dan Callandrillo). That’s the type of defense I saw from the Pirates in this game, particularly Simpkins, Clark, and Parker, who spearheaded the comeback.

They’ve now used it to win back-to-back Big East games, including one on the road, and by now teams know that it’s always in their back pocket when needed. Heck, even Villanova head coach Kevin Willard mentioned it after his team dealt The Hall a loss before Christmas, sounding thoroughly impressed while doing so.

I haven’t watched many games nationally so far, but I can't imagine there’s another team that plays defense like Seton Hall does when at full power in its press. Therefore, there aren’t many that can simulate going against it in practice, either, so the message has been sent loud and clear: Once the Pirates turn on that fire hose of pressure, it’s “good luck” to whoever they’re playing. The Bluejays found that out the hard way this afternoon.