Seton Hall basketball: Why Shaheen Holloway’s teams get no preseason respect

In Shaheen Holloway’s six years as a college basketball head coach, his team has finished near the bottom of its league just once – his first season at Saint Peter’s. He hasn’t posted a losing record in league play since.

Yet seemingly everyone continues to have low expectations for Seton Hall – again.

The 2024-25 Pirates have been slotted for eighth or ninth place in the 11-team league by most prognosticators, and on Wednesday the Big East’s coaches served up the ultimate indignity, ranking the the Hall 10th in their preseason poll.

It’s a familiar story. In his six seasons in charge, Holloway’s squads have dramatically exceeded preseason expectations three times and roughly matched them three times, never falling below them.

In 2019 his Saint Peter’s team was picked to finish ninth in the MAAC and wound up second in the standings before the pandemic scuttled its March Madness push. In 2022 the Peacocks shocked the world by advancing to the NCAA Tournament’s Elite Eight. Last season the Pirates were tabbed for ninth by the Big East coaches and ended up fourth.

A salient example of just how lousy the 2023 coaches’ forecast turned out to be: Though predicted to finish behind Georgetown, the Pirates wound up with 11 more Big East wins than the Hoyas. Eleven.

One analyst’s theories

Vin Parise, who coached alongside Holloway as a fellow assistant at Iona and now covers the Big East as a broadcaster with Fox – he’ll be the analyst for the Hall’s season opener against Saint Peter’s Nov. 4 – has some theories about why Holloway tends to outperform expectations..

Theory one: The hungry player preference.

“Sha has always done a great job of identifying his type of player, and how it fits into what he’s trying to do, regardless of how big a name they have,” Parise said. “I don’t think there’s a college basketball coach on the planet that wouldn’t want a star, but if you’re looking for traits that a player needs to be able to last at Seton…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/seton-hall-basketball-why-shaheen-091311500.html

Author : App.com | Asbury Park Press

Publish date : 2024-10-23 09:13:00

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.