Wagner @ Seton Hall preview
Walsh Gymnasium
Last Meeting ( Nov 18, 2023 ) Wagner 51, Seton Hall 72
Seton Hall coach Shaheen Holloway insists his team is going to get on track following a rocky start to the season.
After back-to-back one-point losses, the Pirates will attempt to start building some momentum well before conference play when they take on Wagner on Saturday afternoon in South Orange, N.J.
Holloway watched Seton Hall (1-2) drop a 57-56 home decision to Fordham last Saturday, and the Pirates came up just short again on Wednesday in a 49-48 road loss to Hofstra.
Chaunce Jenkins posted 18 points and Dylan Addae-Wusu supplied 11 to go along with eight rebounds for Seton Hall in the latest setback, where the Pirates failed to score over the final 50 seconds of regulation.
Still, Holloway doesn't want fans to panic and ensures that the best is yet to come for Seton Hall.
"We had two tough games. Fordham is an Atlantic 10 school, that's a good opponent. Hofstra is a quality opponent," Holloway said. "Should we have lost this game? I don't think so. But these are the games you've got to have early on so we can have success later.
"What I would say to the fan base is step by step, we're going to get it together and figure it out."
The Seahawks (1-2) could pose a bit of a challenge for the Pirates, as they hung with No. 22 St. John's on Wednesday in what turned out to be a 66-45 loss. Wagner was within two with 10:54 left in the second half before landing on the wrong end of a 26-3 run that blew the game open.
Javier Ezquerra was the Seahawks' only double-figure scorer against the Red Storm, finishing with 10 points.
With another Big East opponent on deck, Wagner coach Donald Copeland, a Seton Hall guard from 2002-06, wants his team to be focused on its own level of play rather than what the Pirates are doing.
"The games are gonna just be the games," Copeland said of the meetings with St. John's and Seton Hall after the Seahawks downed Manor College 94-52 last weekend. "We have to kind of focus on ourselves more than the opponents we're gonna play."
--Field Level Media