Pirates and Illinois State Meet for Title Monday
11/24/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Live Stream l Live Audio | | Game Notes
CBS Sports Network l Tournament Bracket (PDF)
ST. THOMAS, USVI - 40 minutes to the title.
The Seton Hall men's basketball team has powered its way into the final of the 2014 Ezybonds Global Payments U.S. Virgin Islands Paradise Jam, throttling past a spirited Gardner Webb team that upended Clemson two days prior to earn a date with Illinois State in Monday's championship.
The Pirates, now 3-0 for the second time in the last four seasons, have thoroughly dominated the scoreboard through the first two contests of the tournament, trailing for all of 17 seconds in a pair of victories over Nevada and the Runnin' Bulldogs.
The last time The Hall opened the season with three consecutive wins was in 2011-12 but the run was halted by Northwestern in the title game of the Charleston Classic. Only seniors Brandon Mobley (Savannah, Ga.) and Haralds Karlis (Riga, Latvia) remain from that group however and now SHU is positioned to claim its first hardware in six years due in large part to the contributions of an impressive set of newcomers.
Freshman Angel Delgado (Bajos De Haina, Dominican Republic) delivered the first of what figures to be many double-doubles to help dispatch Gardner Webb, finishing with 12 points on 6-for-9 shooting to go with 11 rebounds. Classmate Desi Rodriguez (Bronx, N.Y.) was instrumental in a second half charge that put the result out of question, narrowly missing his own double-double with career highs of 15 points and nine boards.
Delgado was at the forefront of a commanding performance that saw The Hall register a 48-to-33 advantage on the glass while Rodriguez led a bench effort in which the Pirate reserves out-scored their counterparts from Gardner Webb, 30-to-14.
18 of Seton Hall's rebounds came on the offensive end where the Pirates are averaging 16 rebounds per contest; nearly doubling their output from last season.
Sophomore guard Jaren Sina (Lake Hopatcong, N.J.) corralled five rebounds for the second-straight outing and combined with backcourt-mate Sterling Gibbs (Scotch Plains, N.J.) to knock down seven of the team's nine 3-pointers in the contest.
Gibbs (16 points) led the team in scoring for the second game in-a-row and Sina added 14 points of his own but the two were part of an efficient attack that benefited from unselfish play as The Hall racked up 19 assists, led by six dimes from Isaiah Whitehead (Brooklyn, N.Y.).
Such distribution may be necessary to find easy buckets against an Illinois State team that stifled Old Dominion in the second half on Sunday, limiting the Monarchs to just seven field goals in the final period en route to a 64-45 victory.
The Redbirds (2-1) are holding their opponents to under 40 percent shooting (.397) through three contests and are yielding just over 56 points per contest.
That defensive prowess has lifted Illinois State into the final but they are still looking for answers on the offensive end where they have yet to score more than 64 points.
That is the challenge of tournament play as one day after stopping a Gardner Webb squad that looked to get up and down and run with The Hall, head coach Kevin Willard's team will need to impose its style of play against an Illinois State group that will look to grind out its first tournament victory since 1999.
With yesterday's victory, Willard surpassed Tommy Amaker on the school's all-time wins list and will aim to add another tonight. In order to do so, Seton Hall will need to contain a backcourt that features a pair of former junior college standouts in Daishon Knight and DeVaughn Akoon-Purcell. Knight (14.3 ppg) and Akoon-Purcell (15.7 ppg) are each adept at getting to the rim but struggle from the outside where they are a combined 5-for-19 (26.3 percent) from long distance.
The Redbirds have connected on just 25.5 percent (12-for-47) of their 3-pointers as a team but 6-foot-10 center Reggie Lynch helps open things up inside where he has converted nearly 60 percent of his attempts and added 10 points per game.
The aforementioned trio stands as the only Redbirds in double-figures in a rotation that features eight players averaging at least 16 minutes per contest.
Tip-off between the two sides is scheduled for 9:00 p.m. EDT. A live national telecast will once again be available on the CBS Sports Network while the Seton Hall radio team of Gary Cohen and Dave Popkin will have the call for 970AM (WNYM) and the Pirate Sports Network on SHUPirates.com
