Hall Closes Regular Season at GU

Pirates can finish as high as seventh in the BIG EAST with a win Saturday

March 6, 2015

SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. - The Seton Hall men's basketball team will wrap up the 2014-15 regular season on Saturday, traveling to Washington, D.C. in search of its second-straight road victory over rival Georgetown.

All 10 BIG EAST teams will be in action tomorrow and a victory could bump The Hall (16-13, 6-11 BIG EAST) up to a #7-seed in next week's conference tournament if coupled with a DePaul loss at Marquette later in the day. 

The Hoyas (19-9, 11-6 BIG EAST) have won 4 of their last 5 games and remain in contention for the second seed as one of three teams tied at 11-6 behind regular season champions Villanova.

The only two teams to hand Villanova a loss this season, Seton Hall and Georgetown will be meeting for the second time in just over three weeks and the 99th overall.

In the first matchup at the Prudential Center, the Hoyas picked up an 86-67 victory behind 43 combined points from junior D'Vauntes Smith-Rivera (23) and freshman Isaac Copeland (20). 

Sterling Gibbs (Scotch Plains, N.J.) led three Pirates in double-figures with 17 points, pushing his career total to 46 points in 3 games against the Hoyas after averaging 14.5 points and 8.0 assists in a Seton Hall sweep of the season series during the 2013-14 campaign.

Five SHU players finished with 9 points or more in the contest including freshman Angel Delgado (Bajos DeThe leading freshman rebounder in Division I, Delgado (9.8 rpg) led Seton Hall on the glass for the 14th-straight game with 7 boards against the Friars on Wednesday. 

The 6-foot-9 newcomer has hauled in at least 7 rebounds in every one of those 14 games and if he does so again on Saturday, Butler's Kameron Woods - who ranks second in the league at 9.6 rebounds/game - would need to pull down at least 15 boards against the Friars to prevent Delgado from becoming just the second freshman ever to capture the BIG EAST rebounding title.

Delgado's activity helped limit the effectiveness of Georgetown big man Josh Smith in the first meeting as the 6-foot-10, 350-pound Smith managed just 4 points and 2 rebounds in 12 minutes amid foul trouble.

Over the course of the game, Delgado and senior Brandon Mobley (Savannah, Ga.) went toe-to-toe with the GU frontcourt; posting collective totals of 23 points and 20 rebounds.

Mobley is coming off a team-high 13 points against Providence on an evening that served as Senior Night for the Savannah product as well as Haralds Karlis (Riga, Latvia) and Stephane Manga (Orleans, France).

Karlis has been on a mini tear of late, shooting 60 percent from the floor (9-of-15) and from beyond the arc (6-of-10) in the last 3 games. Following an 8-point, 3-assist effort against PC in which he logged a season-high 29 minutes, Karlis now owns averages of 8.2 points and 2.2 assists in the 5 games which he has seen 20+minutes of action this season. 

Freshman Isaiah Whitehead (Brooklyn, N.Y.) matched the team-high with 13 points on Wednesday and heads in to the final regular season contest having scored in double-figures in four of Seton Hall's five games since taking on the Hoyas at the Prudential Center. 

Whitehead filled the stat sheet in his first-ever appearance against Georgetown; recording 9 points, 5 assists and 2 steals. The freshman also knocked down 2 of his three 3-point attempts in the game, starting a run in which he has connected on two or more treys in five of the last six games.

3-point shooting is an area in which the Pirates hold an advantage over Georgetown, averaging 7.0 makes from downtown (4th, BIG EAST) to 5.9 for the Hoyas (8th, BIG EAST). After limiting GU to 9-of-31 (.290) from deep in their two victories last season however, the Pirates yielded eight treys in the most recent meeting between the two squads.

To complete its first set of consecutive road wins over Georgetown since the 1974-75 and 1976-77 seasons, Seton Hall will need to return to the form that has made it the top rebounding team in the conference in 2014-15 (36.7 rpg) while exploiting a Hoyas attack that turns the ball over nearly 13 times per game.

In their 6 conference losses, the Hoyas have given the ball away a total of 91 times (15.2/game) - turning it over on at least 13 occasions in each defeat.

Head coach Kevin Willard has led the Pirates to a split of 6 meetings with GU in his 5 seasons at the helm after SHU totaled 5 wins in the series during the 10 seasons prior to his arrival. With another victory on Saturday, he will have led the Pirates to the 17-win mark for the third time in the last 4 seasons.

Tip-off is scheduled for Noon Eastern with Tim Brando and Donny Marshall handling broadcast duties for FOX.