Seton Hall knocked off Marquette in the Big East Tournament with an 82-76 win on Thursday afternoon. So what do the Pirates get as a reward? A chance to play Villanova.
“It’s like waking up on Christmas, you’re all excited, you go down, you open up the present and you’ve got a bunch of coal,” said Seton Hall head coach Fred Willard.
The rematch of the dramatic 2016 Big East title game was due in large part to the performance of
Seton Hall big man Angel Delgado who was one assist shy of a triple-double with 12 points, 16 rebounds (eight offensive) and nine assists.
The Pirates are playing it’s best basketball since they started 10-2. Even a 3-6 start in conference play didn’t shake them and now they’ve won five in a row. “I’ve said this all year long, I thought we were playing a good basketball all year long, even when we were 3-6, he’ll tell you, I put up on the board, I think it was against Georgetown, at Georgetown, I said guys our RPI is better, our strength of schedule is better,” Willard said. “We’ve had a brutal start to the conference season, which I’ve said about a million times. And I knew that once we could get past that stretch that the second half of the season really looked good to us.”
While guys like Khadeem Carrington and Desi Rodriguez are focus points, it was Myles Powell with 17 points off the bench. “But he’s played this way all year long,” Willard said. “He might not get as much attention because of the big fella and Khadeen and Desi, the way they’re playing, but Myles has had a phenomenal freshman year. Everybody forgets, I have to limit him minutes-wise and I have to limit him practice-wise because he’s coming off a broken foot from high school.”
Isaiah Whitehead and Derrick Gordon are gone from the 2016 Big East champs but Seton Hall-Villanova should still be a good one.