NEW YORK — With his stomach churning and his nerves frayed, Shaheen Holloway wasn’t prepared to declare any plans for a Selection Sunday watch party after his team suffered an ugly loss in the Big East Tournament quarterfinals.
That isn’t to say he doesn’t expect to tune into the selection show — and, more importantly, see the words “SETON HALL” appear somewhere in the brackets — because he certainly does. Given his body language as he sat on the dais to address the media, he didn’t look ready to make plans for anything beyond leaving Madison Square Garden as quickly as possible.
“I’m … I’m ... I’m down in the dumps right now,” Holloway said after the 91-72 defeat to St. John’s. “I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, nor do I (bleeping) care.”
He apologized for his salty language, but clearly, this wasn’t the only F bomb that the Seton Hall head coach was going to drop between now and when the NCAA Tournament field is revealed. His Pirates had defeated the Johnnies twice in the regular season, but with a chance to leave no doubt about where they’ll be playing next week, had a sloppy, turnover-filled effort in their biggest game of the season.
It was not a promising performance. St. John’s used what head coach Rick Pitino called “racehorse basketball” to run the Pirates out of the gym — and, depending on which bracketologist you believe, maybe run them straight to the First Four in Dayton, Ohio, instead of a more comfortable spot in the tournament field.
Pitino has hung a few banners over the years, even a couple that the NCAA hasn’t taken down, so he understands that his team’s struggles early in the season don’t matter anymore. “I told the guys: March is what it’s all about,” the 71-year-old coach said.
He is right, of course. But just because the Pirates didn’t look the part on Thursday afternoon in Manhattan doesn’t mean they won’t next week in Brooklyn or Omaha or wherever the selection committee drops them. They have two things going for them as the best three weeks of the college basketball season arrives:
1. They have, in Holloway, someone who has led underdog teams further than anyone expected in the tournament, first as a player in South Orange and later engineering the greatest Cinderella run in history as coach at Saint Peter’s two years ago.
2. They seem to have it hardwired in their DNA to perform at their best when no one thinks they have a chance to win. And that likely is going to be the case now.
Seton Hall wasn’t expected to be within miles of the tournament bubble, much less sitting on the right side of it three days before the field is revealed. Picked ninth in the Big East, the Pirates finished fourth in the standings and were one of three teams to defeat No. 1 Connecticut (which, earlier at the Garden, again looked like it might steamroll to another national championship).
Making the 68-team field shouldn’t even be a question, but as Rutgers discovered a year ago, bad things can happen when you leave the decision in the hands of others. The Pirates have a NET ranking of 64, which is dangerously low, but a solid 5-7 record in Quad 1 wins after playing a challenging schedule.
“I’ll be honest: I think our resume speaks for itself,” he said. “I think this is the best conference in the country. We have 13 wins in the best conference in the country. What else are we talking about right now? I don’t look back and say we had one bad loss.”
If he’s right, Holloway will have to figure out what happened to his team defensively against St. John’s, which hit 51.6 percent of its shots and outrebounded the Hall 39-29. The Pirates will need more from star Kadary Richmond, who finished with 13 points and nine assists, if they want more than a short stay in the NCAA Tournament.
“I didn’t want to lose like this,” Holloway said. “My stomach is turning right now. I can’t believe we came out and played like this in such an important game.”
Holloway looked like he would be fuming the rest of the night, but he understands that the next game — and each one that potentially follows it — will determine how this season is remembered. You want to bet against this coach and team? Good. That’s just how they like it.
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Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com.