Seton Hall head coach Shaheen Holloway is searching for answers, and it’s not clear he has them on his current roster.
The Pirates (5-8, 0-2 Big East) have issues at point guard, in the front court and at the “closer” spot, and have now dropped four straight games after Sunday’s 61-60 home loss to Georgetown at Prudential Center.
“I just gotta get more out of people,” a frustrated Holloway said after the game. “We gotta get more.”
After winning the NIT championship last season, Holloway and his staff had to bring in eight new transfers but only one of them, Old Dominion transfer Chaunce Jenkins, is averaging in double-figures in scoring (11.5 ppg). Only one of them, Providence transfer Garwey Dual, is averaging even two assists per game (2.7 apg). And only one of them, Jenkins, is averaging over four rebounds a game (4.2). And he’s a 6-foot-4 guard.
That’s not a whole lot of production despite adding eight new players with college experience. The Pirates rank 347th out of 355 Division 1 teams in scoring offense at 60.9 points per game. They rank last in the Big East.
Asked if the offense was implementing his philosophy, Holloway said, “No, it’s not. Man, there’s a lot of things I want to say, man. I don’t want to say them, but I want to say them.”
Jenkins looked like an offensive force to start the season. He scored in double-figures in six of his first eight games, including a season-high 22 points in the win over VCU in Charleston. But since then he has battled a knee injury and only has reached double-figures once in his last five games.
“He’s gotta get himself back going,” Holloway said. “I think this time that we’ve got off is gonna help us. It’s gonna help me as a coach.”
The offensive failures crystallized in the final 10.2 seconds of the game when The Hall had the ball with a chance to win it, but couldn’t even get a shot off as Dylan Addae-Wusu was tied up on the perimeter by Georgetown freshman and Trenton, N.J. native Thomas Sorber.
“We had two options off the last play, one was to get to (Isaiah Coleman) and Dylan just had to go,” Holloway said. “…I don’t know, he just ran out of time, I guess.”
The Pirates continue to have issues at point guard and there doesn’t appear to be an answer on the roster. They had eight assists and 10 turnovers against Georgetown. For the season, they are averaging more turns (12.5) than assists (11.1) per game. Only two players, Addae Wusu (2.8 apg) and Dual (2.7) average more than two assists per game, and neither is a natural point guard.
Freshman Jahseem Felton played 14 minutes and had no assists with six points.
“If I can’t trust you in practice, I can’t trust you in the games, and I’ve been telling them that,” Holloway said on Felton. “I gotta see more from you in practice to put you in there. I just want him to be aggressive and play basketball, like, he’s not that quick laterally, but he’s gotta play basketball. I thought today, he was solid, and that’s good. I need him to be solid.”
As for the frontcourt, the Pirates are getting little production.
Holloway started transfers Manny Okorafor and Yacine Toumi against the Hoyas, and they combined for 2 points and 6 rebounds.
On the season, transfer forward Scotty Middleton is averaging 5.6 points, Toumi averages 5.4 points, Prince Aligbe 4.8 points and Okorafor 2.2. Wisconsin transfer Gus Yalden, a fan favorite, averages 2.1 points.
“We gotta get more out of our fours and fives, we gotta get some type of presence,” Holloway said. “I thought it was a great thing that we had 22 offensive rebounds, that’s tremendous, but we gotta get more from those two spots.”
The frontcourt failures were underscored Sunday by the presence of the 6-10 Sorber, a New Jersey native who went for 19 points and 8 rebounds and made the key defensive play at the end. A number of NBA scouts were in attendance for the big man, who told NJ Advance Media that neither Rutgers nor Seton Hall recruited him seriously. He said he never heard from Rutgers at all.
As for the closer role, The Hall has lost four games on the final possession and the fact that they couldn’t get the ball to Coleman in the final seconds against Georgetown underscored their inability to find a go-to guy down the stretch.
“At the end of the game, the players gotta make plays, right?” Holloway said. “I gotta put them in position to make plays, so that’s on me, but we just need somebody that wants to be a closer and wants the ball. And I tried—in the four games, I tried four different people and we still haven’t.”
Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting us with a subscription.
Adam Zagoria is a freelance reporter who covers Seton Hall and NJ college basketball for NJ Advance Media. You may follow him on Twitter @AdamZagoria and check out his Website at ZAGSBLOG.com.
