Shaheen Holloway’s 13-win turnaround was good enough for unanimous Big East Coach of the Year honors for Seton Hall’s head coach. (Photo by Jaden Daly/Daly Dose Of Hoops)
That turnaround was recognized on Wednesday, when head coach Shaheen Holloway was named the Big East’s Coach of the Year in an awards ceremony prior to the start of the conference tournament at Madison Square Garden. Holloway is the fourth Pirate skipper to receive this honor, joining P.J. Carlesimo, Louis Orr and Kevin Willard. He also becomes the fourth former Big East player, along with Orr, Willard and Dan Hurley, to be recognized as the league’s top coach.
“It’s not really an award for me,” Holloway said after being announced as the unanimous Coach of the Year choice six years to the day that he won the same award in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference at Saint Peter’s. “It’s an award for the whole Seton Hall community.”
The Pirates’ resurgence on the heels of a 7-25 campaign last year that yielded only two Big East victories was largely looked at as unexpected, but not so to Holloway, who displayed a quiet confidence entering his fourth season in charge of his alma mater, and carried that humble swagger deftly through a strong non-conference showing before finishing 10-10 in Big East play.
“For everybody else outside of our circle, it was a surprise,” he said. “I wasn’t really surprised, just because of the type of summer we had and how guys bought in quick, and how they came together quick. I knew this group was gonna be pretty good just because everybody sacrificed something for the development of the team. We talked about that early on in June and July, and we started seeing it throughout the year.”
Seton Hall only returned two players from last year’s roster, but neither of them were key contributors this season as both Jahseem Felton and Godswill Erheriene battled injuries, forcing Holloway to essentially rebuild from scratch, a challenge he readily conceded, but praised his team for its ability to handle.
“It’s gonna happen,” he said of the adversity. “Yeah, it’s a challenge, but when you bring good character guys in and guys that care about the name on the front more than the back, I thought that’s helped us.”
Seton Hall has a potentially advantageous path to a Big East championship this week, but the Pirates will first take on a Creighton team in Thursday’s quarterfinal with whom they split both regular season meetings. Should The Hall survive the Bluejays, a possible semifinal with regular season champion St. John’s awaits if the Red Storm can get past either Providence or Butler.
Holloway joked that his team liked to make things difficult after Friday’s regular season finale loss to St. John’s, hinting Seton Hall would have to “go and take it” to win its first conference championship in a decade. But the coach did acknowledge the significance of what such a moment would mean.
“It would be great for those guys coming in here, believing in me, believing in my vision, especially after the season we had last year,” he said. “And if we continue to keep growing and we continue to keep winning, it’s an unbelievable story.”
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