Seton Hall may have punched its ticket to the NCAA Tournament with Sunday’s résumé-building win over No. 5 Xavier, but the Pirates have yet to convince the country they’re for real.
At least, that’s what the national polls seemed to indicate, when Seton Hall failed to break into either the Associated Press or USA Today Coaches’ Top 25 for the first time this season.
“From what I’m seeing, everybody is disrespecting us,” sophomore forward Desi Rodriguez, coming off a career-high 17-point outing against Xavier, said Tuesday in a phone interview. “It just makes us more hungry. All the teams they have above us we may run into in the tournament, and we’re going to try to prove people wrong.”
Seton Hall (21-7, 11-5 Big East), which faces Butler on Wednesday night in Indianapolis, has won eight of its past nine games, and will at worst finish tied for third in the Big East. It has seven wins over teams in the RPI top 100, yet doubters remain.
“We thought we were going to be ranked,” Rodriguez said. “We knocked off Providence, which was 24 [in the coaches poll], and we knocked off No. 5 [Xavier]. Two ranked teams back-to-back.”
They beat those opponents by a combined 27 points, controlling both contests from start to finish. Nevertheless, Rodriguez wanted to make it clear, it isn’t bothering Seton Hall. If anything, it’s ammunition. Coach Kevin Willard said he didn’t hear it discussed at all at practices Monday or Tuesday.
“We feel with us being underdogs is better for us,” Rodriguez said. “It’s what people think. We have no control over that.”
The natural worry following a signature victory is a letdown, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem with the ranking slight. Tuesday morning, before flying to Indianapolis, Willard said he felt his team had a strong practice, and the Pirates should be ready emotionally against Butler, the only team to beat them over the past six weeks and a desperate bubble team needing to stockpile wins to reach the NCAA Tournament.
“We’re definitely looking at it as revenge,” Rodriguez said. “They came on our home floor and they were more hungry than us. We didn’t play our [usual] defensive game. We didn’t bring that defensive energy. We’re looking forward to doing that in this game.”
Seton Hall didn’t play its best game in the loss to Butler, but Willard said the setback had as much to do with what the Bulldogs did right, than what his team did wrong. The Bulldogs are a difficult match for most teams, because of their consistency, experience and scoring prowess.
“Sometimes, good teams make you play bad, and I thought they made us play bad because they played well,” Willard said. “They’re so consistent throughout a whole game. They’re veteran, they’re older, they don’t get too high, don’t get too low. They grind away. That’s tough for a young team [like us].”