Seton Hall head coach Kevin Willard — Image credit: Bill Kostroun
Seton Hall has lost four games in a row and were most recently crushed at Villanova. They’ve stalled at a critical point in the season. A loss to Providence, this Wednesday in Newark, will make reaching the NCAA Tournament increasingly difficult for the Pirates.
Every team will hit bumps in the road during the course of a season. A team hits enough of those bumps and they eventually find themselves at a crossroads. This is the situation for Seton Hall and it’s a very familiar one.
Kevin Willard, now in his ninth season as head coach, has seen past Seton Hall teams faced with the proverbial sink-or-swim dilemma. They’d start out quick before sailing right into the eye of a storm. In recent years, the Pirates had the right mix of talent and veteran leadership to right their ship. This year there’s a different crew on board.
There’s no Angel Delgado to throw the ball into the post whenever the Pirates desperately needed a bucket. There’s no Khadeen Carrington, Desi Rodriguez, or Isaiah Whitehead. They navigated Seton Hall the last three seasons towards NCAA Tournament bids. They were the players Willard trusted to lead his team from the eye of the storm and get them back on the right course.
If Seton Hall is going to right their ship, beginning with Providence, they need Myles Powell to get going.
Powell is not only their best offensive threat, he’s the team leader. The preseason hype train for Powell was fast and furious, he has shown he can deliver buckets at an exciting clip. But he’s struggled to find his offensive groove lately. His stat line (1-for-5 from the field, 3 points in 26 minutes) in the loss to Villanova was inexcusable for a player in his role. The reality of the situation is Seton Hall will continue to struggle if Powell is unable to find his way.
Seton Hall (12-8 overall, 3-5 Big East) still has the benefit of a strong non-conference showing on their schedule. They have quality wins which have kept them afloat. But another loss to Providence will be difficult to ignore when it’s time to start sorting out resumes for March.
Powell must step up and lead the way, but he can’t do it alone. The core group of Delgado, Whitehead, Carrington, and Rodriguez, were talented and could beat opponents in multiple ways. It wasn’t just a one-man attack with those teams.
The question for this year’s group is who’s going to step up and help Powell get them back in the win column? If they can figure that out, it will go a long way towards Willard seeing familiar results with new names in new roles.
