Seton Hall has shot 50 percent or better just once in 11 Big East games. The Pirates’ leading scorer, Isaiah Whitehead, makes just 36.5 percent of his field-goal attempts. As a team, the Pirates are shooting just 33 percent from 3-point range, which actually is up recently, but by no means is the kind of clip to which teams aspire.
Nevertheless, as the regular season nears its stretch run, coach Kevin Willard’s surging team finds itself on the verge of its first NCAA Tournament bid since 2006.
How have the Pirates (17-6, 7-4 Big East), who are alone in the third place in the conference, riding a four-game winning streak entering Wednesday’s contest against Butler at Prudential Center — done it? The answer is simple:
Defense.
“Defense has always been our escape when we’re playing bad,” Whitehead said recently. “When we play defense, I believe we’re a hard team to stop, because we can go out and run.”
The ability to thwart the opposition in the paint and the perimeter and to pile up deflections has keyed Seton Hall’s surprising season. The Pirates allow the second-fewest points per game (66.3) in the Big East and are third in field-goal percentage defense (39 percent), 3-point-percentage defense (31 percent) and rebounding margin (plus 4.6).
The Big East’s stars have struggled against them. Neither Providence point guard Kris Dunn, the likely Big East player of the year, nor rookie of the year front-runner Henry Ellenson of Marquette, has had it easy against Seton Hall. Neither was able to muster more than 16 points in three games against the Pirates, all losses.
The biggest change from last year is personnel. The emergence of sophomore forward Ismael Sanogo, who rarely saw action last winter, has added a human eraser to the back end, as a fine complement to fellow sophomore Angel Delgado’s yeoman’s work on the glass. And the addition of Massachusetts graduate transfer Derrick Gordon has improved the Pirates’ ability to cut off penetration, and has taken pressure off starting guards Whitehead and Khadeen Carrington to check the opposition’s best scorer.
“My job, when I come into the game, is to turn it up to another level,” Gordon said following Saturday’s victory over Georgetown, when he limited senior star D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera to 11 points on 4-of-10 shooting.
Willard will go nine deep and only sharpshooter Veer Singh can be categorized as a limited defender. The Pirates average 7.2 steals, led by 1.6 a game from sophomore Desi Rodriguez, and 4.4 blocks.
Whitehead is one of the Big East’s best guards when it comes to rejections — he has made it a habit to race back in transition to thwart an easy basket — producing 1.1 a contest, second on the team to Sanogo’s 1.3.
“We play aggressive and we play hard, and we have one of the best defenders in the Big East. His name is ‘Ish.’ He gets in everybody’s head,” Delgado said, referring to Sanogo. “We don’t let anybody get anything easy. That’s all we say on the court.”