Seton Hall: What a Difference Year Makes

SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. — The NCAA Final Four shirts were piled high, unsold and seemingly unwanted, in the corner of the bookstore located in the basement of Duffy Hall. They were marked down, reduced, and still they remained on the shelves; hundreds of them, it seemed. “Seton Hall, NCAA Final Four,” “Battle in Seattle” and “NCAA Championship Game, Seattle” they read.

“I don’t know why they don’t get rid of these shirts,” said Leslie Allen, an employee at the bookstore. “We don’t sell any of them, I don’t think. I’ve never seen anybody buying them, at least not since it turned 1990.”

“What about when the alumni were here?” one of the counter clerks, Ellen Davis, said. “What was that, about a week, no, two weeks ago?”

“Yeah,” Allen said.

“How many did we sell then?” Davis said. “We sell a lot?”

“One, I think,” Allen said. “Two, at most. It’s not like we have to go and stock them back up all the time. I don’t know why they just don’t throw them all out. I think the problem is (the team is) losing all the time. Doesn’t that team ever win anymore?”

Welcome to Seton Hall University, 1990, less than one year after the Pirates took the campus, and a nation, by storm. They had begun the ‘88-89 season picked seventh in the Big East and finished it with an 80-79 overtime loss to Michigan in the NCAA Championship Game in Seattle. This year, Seton Hall comes to the Big East Tournament as just another also-ran.

The Pirates (12-15) just missed making an appearance in Thursday night’s dreaded last-place game when they beat St. John’s Saturday in the regular-season finale. Still, Seton Hall holds faint hope it will find a way to sweep through the tournament, thus earning an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. Friday at Madison Square Garden, the Pirates play a first-round game against this year’s dark horse -- eighth-ranked and second-seeded Connecticut. Anything less than a Big East Tournament title and the Pirates will be without a postseason berth -- either NCAA or National Invitation Tournament -- for the first time in four seasons.

“It’s been difficult,” said Coach P.J. Carlesimo, the two-time Big East coach of the year who just last April threw out the first ball of the season at Yankee Stadium and was offered a job as coach of Kentucky in the same week. “But this is inevitable. It’s a different team from that one; there are so many new kids and different expectations. We didn’t know what our potential was, how good or bad we would be. I’m not saying we did a great job, but we do have nine first-year players, two of them walk-ons, and we have been competitive, been entertaining for the most part. I still think this team is better than the NIT team we had three years ago. This team doesn’t have the numbers to back it up, but this is a pretty good team.”

But not good enough. Where last season Seton Hall always seemed to find a way to win, this team, with five new starters -- has been the opposite, losing 10 of 16 games decided by fewer than 10 points, six of those by five points or fewer. In February, Seton Hall lost six of seven games, although all but one -- a 78-65 loss at Boston College -- were to ranked teams. This season, the Pirates have fallen to Oklahoma (89-84) and North Carolina State (65-62), to Syracuse (74-65 and 71-69), St. John’s (90-81, OT) and, yes, also to Michigan (91-86).

“It’s been very tough,” swingman Michael Cooper, one of only two scholarship seniors on the team, said last week after the Pirates had fallen to Syracuse on a last-second tip-in by Derrick Coleman. “It hasn’t really sunk in yet what has happened this season; that come the tournament, our next loss will be our last game. The toughest part is we’ve been right there. We’ve played all the top-ranked teams in the nation on national television and we’re right there all the time. But we can’t seem to grab it.”

Seton Hall is led by freshman guard Terry Dehere, who has averaged 16.5 points, 3.4 assists and 2.1 rebounds, but who has been pressing of late -- his shooting percentage is down to 39.1 percent in the league after a brilliant early-season stretch. Cooper, meanwhile, has been the most consistent player on a team that has been erratic at best. He has averaged 13.6 points and 6.3 rebounds and shot 57 percent from the field. The Pirates have been plagued by the sporadic inside play of Frantz Volcy, a 6-8 senior who has averaged 12.2 points, 6.5 rebounds and 3.9 fouls per game. Center Anthony Avent has been a solid rebounder with 9.3 per game, but has not produced much offense -- he has averaged 10.7 points -- and has also averaged 3.9 fouls per game. The Hall has lacked depth and a true point guard who can run the offense. It has won some games and remained close in others mainly because of aggressive man-to-man defense.

“Last year, we went into the Big East Tournament knowing that no matter what happened we were going somewhere in the NCAA Tournament,” Volcy said. “Now, all that has changed. We know we can beat these teams; know we’ve been so close. But we also know it’s do-or-die.”

That desperation, it seems, is reflected on campus. Where last year there were parties, parades and celebrations for a team that captured both the heart and imagination of the community, now, it seems, there is little interest.

“See Your Pirates Versus Syracuse, 7 P.M. In The Game Room,” read the sign outside the Bishop Dougherty Student Center one day last week. And below, “Confessions all day in chapel.”

“It’s not like it was last year,” said Kim Lecardo, a sophomore working the information desk in the student center who said a crowd of about “20 to 25” was expected for the telecast that night. “People on campus just don’t care that much about the team now.”

Which, perhaps, is why so many of those shirts still remain on sale at the bookstore in Duffy Hall. “You know,” Cooper said, “I don’t think they sell many of those shirts, but it’s probably because of the price.” Maybe, it’s because they only serve as a reminder of how far the team has fallen.