4 Thoughts: Seton Hall suffers damaging loss to DePaul – A Daly Dose Of Hoops

NEWARK, N.J. — Down by five in the late stages of the first half, the Seton Hall Pirates’ defense showed its teeth, turning the DePaul Blue Demons over four times in the final three minutes en route to a 7-0 run and two-point halftime lead in a nip-and-tuck game.

But in the second half, it was the visitors who were the tougher unit, as the Pirates’ NCAA Tournament hopes were all but extinguished with a 69-57 defeat at Prudential Center.

Here are the Thoughts:

1. Hard Hats Absent

You could have been fooled by watching the first five minutes of this game that it was taking place between two of the top five defensive teams in the Big East per KenPom, with the Pirates placing second and DePaul a respectable fifth (and 56th in the nation), as it was 13-9 in favor of Seton Hall at the first media timeout. The Pirates were 5-for-6 from the field and 3-for-3 from deep, representing a rare good start to a game offensively.

But before too long, it turned into a physical battle like was expected, and after the aforementioned spurt at the end of the first half, plus a couple straight baskets in the second half to extend it to 11-1, it was DePaul that put on the hard hats and got to work. 

The Blue Demons, who went just 1-for-9 in the first half from the three-point line, started off the second half by having their first four made baskets come from deep, and if it wasn’t the threes, DePaul was getting to the free throw line, where they eventually out-attempted the Pirates, 18-9, in the final 20 minutes en route to the comeback win.

“You have to give DePaul credit,” head coach Shaheen Holloway said. “I was really worried about this game, because if you watch them, even in the first game (against us), they just out-toughed us. They did the same thing in this game. I told the guys that this is a game where you have to be aggressive on offense just as much as you’re aggressive on defense because of how they play. They want to take everything away. But we just looked like we were in quicksand. We had no burst, and then we did uncharacteristic things down the stretch that we don’t do.”

Indeed if you look at the box score from the first meeting of the season in Chicago, DePaul was the aggressor in that contest also, with 34 attempted free throws to The Hall’s 17, going along with eight made three-pointers to the Pirates’ four. Even without factoring in the minus-13 rebound margin tonight (it was just minus-1 in the first meeting), it was clear who the tougher team was again.

“I thought driving to the basket, we were driving not tough, hoping the referees bail us out with a call, not going with any type of physicality,” Holloway said when asked what happened down the stretch of the game. “And this team’s good, and we couldn’t defend them. They were just getting in the lane any time they wanted.”

It’s not something you typically see from this Pirates team, but there may be another factor at play here than facing a tough-as-nails opponent.

2. Weathered Pirates

In Holloway’s postgame comments on the radio on Sunday after the win at Butler, he alluded to being frustrated by the schedule, as beginning with that game, the Pirates had three games in the span of seven days, meaning back-to-back quick turnarounds. Some of what befell them tonight may fall on that point.

“It’s tough,” he said when asked about potential tired legs. “It’s even going to be tougher on Saturday. Three games in a week is tough, especially in February.”

“I was on the sidelines trying to see what I could do to help them,” he added. “We just didn’t have it. And it’s tough to say that for a game like this because it’s such a big game for us. But man, we had no legs. On Monday, we got back late, couldn’t do anything, and then yesterday, we were trying to do some stuff, but guys just didn’t have it, I’ll be honest with you. I tried everything, and I’m still going to try everything, but we’ve got to learn from it, and bounce back on Saturday.”m”

It’s easy to sit there as fans and decry the Pirates for being tired, but Holloway has a point, especially given that Seton Hall generally has been successful this season only when it out-toughs its opponents. The Pirates have to compete, hard, every night to win. Most of the time, that’s not an issue, but these are the college basketball equivalent of the dog days of summer during baseball season. Everyone’s a little tired, everyone’s a little banged up, and DePaul just happened to be the wrong opponent at the wrong time, taking advantage of Seton Hall’s predicament.

3. CJ in NJ

As much as Pirate fans may not want to hear it right now, I have to take a moment and give the Blue Demons some flowers. When DePaul hired former Butler and Ohio State head coach Chris Holtmann a couple years ago, I said to myself that it finally hired a coach who could breathe life into the moribund Blue Demons program, having seen firsthand what he was able to do at Butler (namely, give opponents fits on a consistent basis).

What I saw tonight was the best defensive DePaul team I think I’ve ever seen. Just like Seton Hall, the Blue Demons bring their toughness to the gym every night. Three times tonight, they forced the Pirates into shot clock violations, and it wasn’t really Seton Hall’s fault, either. For years now, decades even, DePaul has had nowhere near that consistent a compete level, and its 11-3 record when scoring 70 or more points indicates that when it can put some offense together along with its defense, the Blue Demons have been successful.

They also have, in my opinion, two of the more underrated players in the Big East in C.J. Gunn and N.J. Benson. The latter controlled the first half, scoring 14 of his 20 points on a perfect 6-for-6 from the field, banging inside for buckets no matter who was guarding him. The former then lit things up in the second half en route to 18 points, using his high release to shoot over the Pirates’ outstretched hands and burn them from the perimeter.

This marks DePaul’s third straight win over Seton Hall for just the second time ever head-to-head (2014-15), and just the third time it has ever swept the home-and-home regular season series (joining the 2014-15 and 2018-19 seasons). The Blue Demons did not accomplish the feat by accident.

4. What Next?

New Jersey-based bracketologist Brad Wachtel did not mince words on Twitter when he said it was a “terrible loss” tonight for the Pirates, adding that they pretty much have to win at UConn next week to have a shot at the NCAA Tournament.

It’s kind of a cliche at this point, but I think the best way forward for the Pirates would be to just focus on what’s in front of them, not that they haven’t already been doing that. Some of the noise of their hopes of making it back to the NCAA Tournament will probably reach the players’ ears, as it’s tough to really shut all of that out in 2026.

But the Pirates still have the look (and the resume) of a team that will be playing in the postseason overall. And to let all the effort they’ve put in to this point evaporate because of a bad loss at a bad time would be unbecoming of a group that has shown much resilience and fight throughout the season.

As the saying goes, just keep swimming. Seton Hall may have lost its chance at the big fish tonight, but there’s still a lot to play for.