The friendly confines of home helped the Seton Hall Pirates bounce back from getting thumped in Omaha by Creighton with a resounding 76-51 victory over the Butler Bulldogs Saturday evening at Prudential Center in Newark. Tyrese Samuel led the Pirates with 19 points, 15 coming in the first half. Jayden Taylor led the Bulldogs off the bench with 14.
The Pirates jumped out of the gate with Samuel getting the first seven points for the team and nine of the first 11 points as they jumped out to an 11-4 lead four minutes into the game. Butler scored five quick points to bring the score to 13-9 and you could feel the 9,033 fans at The Rock start to tense up getting flashbacks of the dreadful performance in Omaha the other night. Two successive three point baskets from Al-Amir Dawes and Kadary Richmond opened up a 12-2 Pirates run over the next four minutes and Seton Hall never looked back from there. The game flowed so well that the entire starting lineup stayed in with no substitutions until the media timeout with just under eight minutes left in the first half. Butler struggled to get a flow going for much of the game even when the Pirates were in a three minute scoring drought late in the half. Tray Jackson came off the bench and broke that drought with a three pointer and scored the final eight points of the half to put the Pirates up 41-23 at halftime.
After the break, KC Ndefo hit a layup while getting fouled by Jalen Thomas and converted the free throw. On the next possession Femi Odukale blocked a shot by Simas Lukosius, then Richmond grabbed the rebound and fired a full court pass to a streaking Dawes for a layup to put Seton Hall up 46-25 less than two minutes into the second half. A few minutes later Dawes hit another three to give The Hall a 26 point lead at 55-29 for their biggest lead yet with 14 minutes remaining. The Bulldogs repeatedly failed to get any substantial comeback going, never coming any closer than 18 points for the rest of the game before ultimately falling by 25.
In the postgame, Pirates coach Shaheen Holloway said of the 12 minute stretch with no substitutions to open the game:
“They came out with a lot of energy. It was working, why change it? Nobody looked tired, no one looked fatigued, no one looked out of it. We had a good groove going, just went with the flow.”
Holloway was asked about taking out Kadary Richmond just short of a triple double:
“I didn’t even know. That’s on me. I’m into individual stuff like that, it’s big for him. At the same time, I’m not going to have him in the game at the end like that, something could happen.”
Kadary Richmond said of the almost triple double:
“After I got subbed out, there was a conversation about it, but I didn’t know it when I was playing…we got the win so that’s all that matters.”
Tyrese Samuel said of the fast start:
“We were desperate for the win. The last couple games we were moving slow, we really needed a win and pretty much that was what motivated me, and pretty much motivated all of our team going into practice this week.”
News and notes:
Kadary Richmond came out of the game at the 10 minute mark after missing two free throws and with the huge lead he never re-entered the game, finishing with 11 points, 8 rebounds, and 9 assists, just short of a triple-double.
The last Seton Hall player to have a triple double in a game was Eddie Griffin against Norfolk State on December 4, 2000. When informed that no Seton Hall player has ever had a triple double in a Big East game, Coach Holloway said “I thought I had one, but I guess I didn’t?”
Seton Hall goes on the road for their next two games, at Georgetown on Tuesday January 10 at 8:30pm on FS1, then playing at DePaul on Saturday the 14th before returning home against UConn on Wednesday the 18th. Georgetown has lost 26 consecutive Big East Regular season games dating back to March 2021.