Seton Hall

[Bill Marsh]

I don't know how Seton Hall pissed off whoever's in charge of making the schedule, but the Pirates start a brutal stretch today of 3 road games in 6 days.

@Marquette
2 days off
@Providence
1 day off
@Villanova

Ouch.

Marquette has the 3 games in 6 days this week too, but at least their first 2 are at home.

I don't have a problem with this kind of schedule crunch when it occurs during intersession. In fact, this is a good time to load up the schedule if that's what they have to do to keep it sane when kids are back in class. If anyone is dictating such an arrangement, I'm guessing that it's TV.

In the case of Seton Hall specifically, the PC and VU games don't involve long travel. Heck, they probably don't even stay overnight for the Villanova game.

[stever20]

The league dictated that we play Sat so that we didn't have an unfair advantage of extra time off. We couldn't find a decent D1 game as everyone is in conference play and we didn't want an RPI killer, so we scheduled Truman (won't count against RPI). Oh well! Won't be 18000 at that game!!

That doesn't make any sense. Creighton should tell "the league" to go pound sand.

It totally makes sense. I know SEC in football has a rule that everyone must play the final weekend of the season, so if a team makes the SEC title game in football, they will have played the week before.

I think in the future the league will say no OOC games the Saturday before the Marathon, and all 10 teams play conference games that Saturday, followed by the Marathon on Monday.

[brewcity77]

The Providence game is big for SHU. They need to get to 9-9 to have a real shot at the Tournament. I hate playing against this Seton Hall team, and that's a compliment. Tough guards, absolute brick wall bigs, they remind me of old Big East teams in terms of physicality and will to win. Just really tough. They're the type of team that gets in as a 10-seed and goes to the Sweet 16 or Elite 8. I'm still lukewarm on Willard, and will have to see him win with more than this one class to be convinced he's a long-term answer, but this group is solid.

[cu blujs]

Must be something new. I know in past years, we have had a full week and even one year a 10 day break in February, while other teams played. I know we have in the past had a two or three day turnaround to play a team coming off of a full week to 8 days or so break. Understandably, in order to make schedules work there is going to be some unevenness in when teams last played. But in this case, its only a 6 day stretch. Why play the Saturday game if you are going to do the Monday marathon? Rhetorical question, since I assume to get the Saturday t.v. games. Still, seems like if we want the MLK Day games, then schedule so that there are no Saturday games. Let Fox have an MMA marathon Saturday.

[stever20]

Must be something new. I know in past years, we have had a full week and even one year a 10 day break in February, while other teams played. I know we have in the past had a two or three day turnaround to play a team coming off of a full week to 8 days or so break. Understandably, in order to make schedules work there is going to be some unevenness in when teams last played. But in this case, its only a 6 day stretch. Why play the Saturday game if you are going to do the Monday marathon? Rhetorical question, since I assume to get the Saturday t.v. games. Still, seems like if we want the MLK Day games, then schedule so that there are no Saturday games. Let Fox have an MMA marathon Saturday.

They almost have to with the way the schedule works. They have 20 slots for 18 games. They like having the 2 extra slots for either byes or OOC game.

[Hall2012]

I think last night showcased pretty much exactly what Seton Hall is. They have several very talented players, each of whom is capable of carrying the offense. However, as a team they continuously shoot themselves in the foot and as a result will likely continue to beat themselves in games they should win. The Pirates are among the worst teams in the country in both turnover rate and free throw shooting. With everything else they have going for them, if they could protect the ball and knock down free throws at even a slightly below average rate, they'd easily be a top 25 team. However, if they don't get these 2 glaring issues fixed quickly, they may find themselves headed to the NIT.

[Savannah Jay]

I seriously doubt the league dictated anything regarding Creighton's scheduling of Truman. The Creighton stretch between Butler and Xavier is only 5 days (Wed, Jan 11 to Monday Jan 16). What's more, every team in the league that I looked at has at least one 5 day stretch between games. Xavier has 6 days off after the Creighton game. SJU and Georgetown have one six day stretch as well. Marquette has a week (Feb 11 to Feb 18) between games next month. Villanova has three instances of 5 days between games.

So, to make a short story long, Creighton is not playing the game Saturday because they have to...I assume they had one more game they could schedule, didn't want to put a difficult game in the middle of Butler and X and, as pointed out, chose someone that would amount to a scrimmage where (presumably) some guys other than the top 7 in the rotation will see significant minutes yet wouldn't be an RPI killer.

[stever20]

I seriously doubt the league dictated anything regarding Creighton's schedule. The Creighton stretch between Butler and Xavier is only 5 days (Wed, Jan 11 to Monday Jan 16). What's more, every team in the league that I looked at has at least one 5 day stretch between games. Xavier has 6 days off after the Creighton game. SJU and Georgetown have one six day stretch as well. Marquette has a week (Feb 11 to Feb 18) between games next month. Villanova has three instances of 5 days between games.

So, to make a short story long, Creighton is not playing the game Saturday because they have to...I assume they had one more game they could schedule, didn't want to put a difficult game in the middle of Butler and X and, as pointed out, chose someone that would amount to a scrimmage where (presumably) some guys other than the top 7 in the rotation will see significant minutes.

I actually DO think the league dictated it. Make it where everyone on the Marathon is on exact same footing.

Creighton has a 7 day stretch later in the season between games. Feb 4 they play Xavier, Feb 11 they play DePaul(who plays Xavier on Feb 8).

[jfan]

Sorry Savannah, you are wrong. The Coach said last night that the league wanted us to play Saturday. Think about it, why would we schedule this game? Play Butler Wed night, play Sat and then fly to X on Sunday. We knew X was going to be trouble, so why not have extra time to prepare for them.

[stever20]

I think last night showcased pretty much exactly what Seton Hall is. They have several very talented players, each of whom is capable of carrying the offense. However, as a team they continuously shoot themselves in the foot and as a result will likely continue to beat themselves in games they should win. The Pirates are among the worst teams in the country in both turnover rate and free throw shooting. With everything else they have going for them, if they could protect the ball and knock down free throws at even a slightly below average rate, they'd easily be a top 25 team. However, if they don't get these 2 glaring issues fixed quickly, they may find themselves headed to the NIT.

it's amazing the ft shooting....

look at conference play.
Seton Hall is #10 right now. 59.5%
Georgetown is #9 right now. 67.6%
Everyone else is over 70%. With 6 over 74%.

to%-
Seton Hall #10 right now at 23.6%
DePaul #9 at 20.6%
Providence #8 at 19.9%
everyone else at 18.5% or better.