Pirates Live To Fight Again
Seton Hall is looking good and not looking back.
The Pirates, who didn't clinch a spot in the Big East tournament until the last game of the regular season, advanced to the semifinals with a 58-40 victory over No. 18 Georgetown on Thursday.
A season that started with a Top 10 ranking and then saw the Pirates lose eight of nine games in one stretch and almost not even qualify for the conference tournament has taken a sudden turn.
The Pirates (16-13) won their third straight game by opening the second half with a 24-3 run to take control. They held the Hoyas (23-7) to half their season scoring average in matching the fewest points ever allowed in a Big East tournament game.
"Sometimes it isn't up to any of us to try to judge what the timing of things should be," Seton Hall coach Tommy Amaker said. "We're grateful we're in the position we're in right now. We wish we could have done a lot of things early. You can't look back and regret those kinds of things. We just know that things are moving forward with us and it's funny how things can come around."
Andre Barrett had 12 points to lead Seton Hall, which went 5-11 in the conference. The Pirates weren't guaranteed a trip to Madison Square Garden until they beat Connecticut in the regular-season finale.
Seton Hall defeated St. John's 78-66 in the opening round and then came up with a super defensive effort Thursday to advance to Friday's semifinals against No. 10 Boston College (24-4), a team it did not play during the season.
"As I just told the kids in the locker room, they very well could be the best team in our conference," Amaker said of Boston College, which beat Villanova 93-79 in the quarterfinals.
"I think they've had a great year and are playing confidently. I know we're going to have our hands full having played two games in two days."
The win was the third straight for the Pirates after losing eight of nine.
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But the Pirates scored the first 11 points of the second half to take a 36-26 lead with 15:35 to play on a jumper by Barrett.
Georgetown missed 13 of its first 14 shots after halftime and committed six turnovers in the 24-3 run that was capped by Barrett's three-point play that made it 49-29 with 9:09 left.
Georgetown's 14 points in the second half set a Big East tournament record for fewest. The old mark was 16, done three times.
The only other time a team scored 40 points in a tournament game was when Georgetown beat Miami by 27 points in the opening round in 1993.
"This was one of those games when you wake up in the middle of the night and dream about having and hope you never have. We had it today," Georgetown coach Craig Esherick said.
"We couldn't shoot the ball at all. We started well and played well then we couldn't do anything right. I thought Seton Hall played extremely well."
Eddie Griffin, Darius Lane and Ty Shine each had 11 points for Seton Hall.
"We're playing good ball right now, playing together well," Lane said. "After Villanova (the last loss before the Connecticut game) we had embarrassed ourselves and knew we had to play together."
Lee Scruggs scored 12 points to lead Georgetown, which got two points from its starters in the second half. The Hoyas, who had won three straight and four of five, finished 17-for-58 from the field (29.3 percent), including 6-for-28 (21 percent) in the second half.
"They'll be all right," Esherick said of his team. "The first thing is a day off before we have to watch that tape. I don't want to play this way again, certainly not in the next tournament we're in."
It is Seton Hall's first appearance in the semifinals since 1994, when it lost to Georgetown.
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