Big East Preview Primer: vs Seton Hall

The Pirates are bad this season, and they were extra bad after losing to MU earlier this season…… but they did just beat UConn on Saturday…..

#16 Marquette Golden Eagles (19-6, 10-4 Big East) vs Seton Hall Pirates (7-18, 2-12 Big East)

Date: Tuesday, February 18, 2025
Time: 8pm Central
Location: Fiserv Forum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

The Stakes: Gotta win on the night Marquette hangs Jim Chones’ #22 in the rafters.

Marquette Stat Leaders

Points: Kam Jones, 19.2 ppg
Rebounds: David Joplin, 5.4 rpg
Assists: Kam Jones, 5.9 apg

Seton Hall Stat Leaders

Points: Isaiah Coleman, 15.3 ppg
Rebounds: Isaiah Coleman, 5.4 rpg
Assists: Garwey Dual & Dylan Addae-Wusu, 2.9 apg

KenPom.com Rankings

Marquette: #27
Seton Hall: #204
Game Projection: Marquette has a 97% chance of victory, with a predicted score of 76-56.

Last Time Out: Marquette went on an 18-2 run at the Prudential Center after Seton Hall had closed an early 9-2 margin down to 12-11. 30-13 Marquette, 12 point lead at halftime after both teams went without a field goal for the final four minutes, 27 point maximum margin, MU wins 76-59 behind 19 points from Kam Jones.

Since Last We Met: Well, had I written this entire preview on Saturday morning and hit publish and forgotten about it, I would have said “nothing but misery for the Pirates.” After losing at home to MU, SHU had the following results:

• lose by 25 at Creighton
• lose by 2 at home to Providence after rallying back to lead from down 15 in the second half
• lose by 17 at DePaul
• lose by 30 at home to Butler
• lose 14 at Georgetown

Zero fun…… right up until they beat UConn at home in overtime on Saturday afternoon.

To be clear about this: Alex Karaban hit a three with 1:54 to go that put the Huskies up 55-48 and capped a 27-13 UConn run, including each of the last eight in a row. Seven point game with 40 seconds left. Seton Hall was down three with UConn inbounding with 12 seconds left. Liam McNeeley couldn’t get the ball inbounded, turnover, and then this happened:

That is Godswill Erheriene blowing a dunk to cut the lead to 1 with nine seconds left, Isaiah Coleman tracking down the loooooong rebound, and Dylan Addae-Wusu, coming in at 9-for-31 (29%) on threes in Big East play, cashing in with seconds left in regulation.

I mean this seriously: If Erheriene, who came into the game with 41 field goal attempts all season, makes the dunk, Seton Hall probably loses in regulation.

In overtime, Seton Hall trailed by five with 50 seconds left and by one with nine seconds left and UConn inbounding. And then this happened.

I presume UConn fans everywhere are livid about that Solo Ball turnover…… and not at Ball for turning it over.

Tempo Free Fun: So here’s where we land on this. How much do you want to take into account the best overall performance that Seton Hall has thrown together against a high major opponent all season? BartTorvik.com has a Game Score metric, and SHU gets an 86 for that win against the Huskies. The only time they’ve bested that this season is against Wagner (97), VCU (87), and Florida Atlantic (87). Seton Hall hasn’t had a Game Score north of 63 since losing at Rutgers (82) on December 14th, and they hadn’t been north of 50 since losing at Butler on January 15th.

In other words: The Pirates are not a very good basketball team.

Looking at only their Big East games, Seton Hall is #10 in the league in offensive efficiency, ahead of only DePaul, and they’re dead last in defensive efficiency. They don’t score, and they don’t get stops, and I bet that last part is driving head coach Shaheen Holloway absolutely bonkers. He’s had somewhere between good and great defensive teams for the past five years, even at Saint Peter’s, and now that’s going the other way on him.

Looking at SHU’s games since the loss to Marquette but ignoring their win over UConn, Seton Hall has been playing like the #319 team in the country according to the BartTorvik.com data filtering system. That’s #357 on offense and #151 on defense. Better on one end than the other, but clearly not good.

But they did beat UConn.

If we accept the premise that Seton Hall is a bad team that’s been getting worse, but they did figure out how to beat a tournament caliber team on Saturday, then we have to look at the parts of how they beat the Huskies to see if they just got lucky in one facet of the game or something like that.

Let’s be honest about it: They didn’t beat UConn because they shot the ball well. Yes, Seton Hall went 6-for-15 behind the three-point line for a 40% success rate. However, the Pirates are 5-3 this season when they shoot 40% or better from behind the arc, which just tells us that it’s not a thing that they do well in general. The Pirates also shot under 39% on two-point attempts, which sounds like it’s a bad thing….. but now they’re 4-3 on the year when they do that.

Seton Hall may have won because they did a pretty great job keeping possession of the ball, both in terms of turnovers (13.4%, 5th best game of the year) and on offensive rebounds (37.5%, 7th best game of the year). Marquette’s game plan is focused on making sure the former doesn’t come close to happening with a defensive turnover rate north of 23% on the season, so that’s good news. Marquette is, unfortunately, kind of a terrible defensive rebounding team, so it’s going to take a lot of work from MU to make sure that the Pirates don’t have a second straight quality game in that department.

Saturday’s win over the Huskies was Seton Hall’s second worst defensive efficiency in a win this season, so that feels like a thing that doesn’t bode well for them at Fiserv Forum. One of the things that Seton Hall did right in that game was prompting a turnover on nearly 24% of UConn’s possessions, and once again, Marquette’s game plan is designed to stop that from happening. SHU generated six turnovers from Liam McNeeley alone on Saturday, including the failure to inbound that allowed them to tie it up in regulation. Marquette hasn’t had a turnover rate north of 21.0% this season, although we do have to note that 1) Marquette has lost both times that their turnover rate was over 19.1% (Xavier and Dayton, for the record) and 2) Seton Hall is the team that forced the most turnovers against the Golden Eagles this season and still lost anyway.

One potential worrying thing for Marquette? Seton Hall did have one of their better shooting defensive nights of the season as they beat UConn. #7 on effective field goal percentage, #4 on two-point shooting, and #7 three-point shooting. Seton Hall has won all four games where they held an opponent under 42.5% two-point shooting this season. MU is just 3-5 this season when they’re held to under 50% two-point shooting, so there’s a clear pathway to problems there for the Golden Eagles, especially with three of those five losses coming as that run of three straight losses to UConn, St. John’s, and Creighton.

Seems like the bad news is that the things that Seton Hall did kind of well against UConn are all things that are either A) Marquette’s long term weaknesses this season or B) recent problems that have haunted the Golden Eagles.

The good news is that Shaka Smart can spend all day Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday pointing out that Seton Hall just beat the UConn team that beat MU on National Marquette Day. If that’s not particularly helpful in grabbing his team’s attention and getting them to play with the Goon Mentality that Smart preached in the preseason, I don’t know what will.

Marquette Last 10 Games: 6-4, with a win over DePaul last week snapping a three game losing streak.

Seton Hall Last 10 Games: 1-9 with Saturday’s overtime win against UConn snapping a nine game losing streak.

All-Time Series: Marquette leads, 25-14

Current Streak: Marquette won the second game last season as well as the trip to Newark earlier this year, so that’s two straight for the Golden Eagles and six of the last seven against the Pirates.

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