Eighth-Seeded Pirates Head West To Face Ninth-Seeded TCU

Game 32: No. 8 Seton Hall Pirates (21-10, 11-8 BIG EAST) vs. No. 9 TCU Horned Frogs (20-12, 8-10 Big 12)
Friday, March 18 • Viejas Arena (San Diego, Calif.) • 9:57 p.m.
TV: truTV with Lisa Byington, Avery Johnson, Steve Smith, Lauren Shehadi
Web: March Madness App
Radio: AM970 with Gary Cohen & Dave Popkin
Game Notes: Seton Hall | TCU
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NOTES YOU NEED TO KNOW

Friday will mark Seton Hall's 14th all-time NCAA Tournament appearance, all of them coming since 1988.
The Pirates are 16-13 all-time in NCAA games with trips to the Final Four in 1989, Elite Eight in 1991, and Sweet Sixteen in 1992 and 2000.
Seton Hall has made five of the last six NCAA Tournaments.
Prior to the cancelation of the 2020 NCAA Tournament, the Pirates were BIG EAST regular season champions, on their way to high seed and their fifth consecutive trip to the NCAA Tournament.
Seton Hall went 7-8 against 10 teams in the NCAA Tournament field this season.
South Orange to San Diego is 2,414 miles in the air, making Seton Hall's trip to the West Coast the farthest of any team in the current bracket.
Seton Hall is 10-5 all-time in NCAA Tournament games West of the Mississippi River.
The Pirates finished the regular season and BIG EAST tournament winning nine of their last 12 games, including six straight from Feb. 19 through March 10.
The Hall finished the BIG EAST regular season with wins in eight of its last 10 games after starting league play 3-6.
Seton Hall was one of 14 teams in the Division I with at least six Q1 wins and no Q3-4 losses.
With its win over Creighton on March 5, Seton Hall secured its sixth 20-win season over the last seven years, and Willard now has seven 20-win seasons in his 12 years at the helm of The Hall.
The Pirates finished in a tie for fifth place in the BIG EAST standings, The Hall has now finished in the top half of the conference seven consecutive seasons.
After going 3-5 in January, the Pirates are a combined 9-3 in the months of February and March.
The Pirates (at No. 4 Michigan, 67-65) and Kentucky (at No. 5 Kansas, 80-62) are the only two teams that secured a true top five non-conference road win.
Seton Hall went 9-1 in the non-conference with wins over Texas, Michigan, Rutgers, Wagner (NEC runner-up) and Yale (Ivy League champions).
Seton Hall has allowed only 62 points per contest over the last seven games and it has held their last 11 opponents to shoot 29 percent from three-point range.
Seton Hall has held its last seven opponents to 68 points or less.
Seton Hall is 18-1 this season when it holds its opponents under 70 points and 17-1 when its either leading or tied at halftime.
The Pirates lead the BIG EAST in three-point field goal percentage defense allowing opponents to shoot at a 30.9 percent clip and they rank second in field goal percentage defense (39.9 percent).
The Pirates rank 26th in the country in adjusted defensive efficiency according to KenPom.
The Hall is 131-19 (.873) since 2015-16 when its lead gets to seven points.
Senior Jared Rhoden (Baldwin, N.Y.) played on the Pirates' 2019 NCAA Tournament team while graduate student Myles Cale (Middletown, Del.) played on Seton Hall's NCAA Tournament squads in 2018 and 2019.
An All-BIG EAST First Team selection, Rhoden is averaging 17.8 points and 4.6 rebounds per game while shooting 47 percent from three-point range over the last five games.
Cale has played in the most BIG EAST games in the history of the conference (94) and the most games played in Seton Hall history (153).

INSIDE THE SERIES: TCU

Friday will be the first meeting between the Pirates and the Horned Frogs.
TCU head coach Jamie Dixon served as head coach at Kevin Willard's alma mater, Pitt, from 2003-13.
Willard went 1-2 against Dixon's teams at Pitt.
The two programs had two common opponents this season in Georgetown and Texas.
TCU went 1-2 against the Longhorns while the Pirates defeated Texas, 64-60, at Prudential Center on Dec. 9 in the BIG EAST/Big 12 Battle.
Willard is 4-3 all-time against current Big 12 programs.

TOURNAMENT TIDBITS

Seton Hall is 3-3 all-time when seeded eighth in the NCAA Tournament.
The Pirates have won their first game each time they've been the eight-seed.
In the Pirates' first trip to the NCAA Tournament in 1988, they played a team from Texas in the first round (UTEP) and played top-seeded Arizona in the second round.
Seton Hall legend P.J. Carlesimo, who led the Pirates to six NCAA Tournaments and the National Championship game in 1989, will be at Viejas Arena calling the game on Westwood One.
This is the first trip to the NCAA Tournament for graduate student transfers Alexis Yetna and Jamir Harris.
Two Seton Hall starters have played on teams that have made it past the first weekend; Kadary Richmond at Syracuse last season and Ike Obiagu at Florida State in 2017-18.
Seton Hall will have two alumni leading programs at this year's NCAA Tournament; Dan Hurley (Connecticut) and Shaheen Holloway (Saint Peter's).
Holloway served as associate head coach under Willard for eight seasons at Seton Hall, helping build the foundation of the program's recent run of success.
This trip will be homecoming of sorts for freshman Tyler Powell (Los Angeles, Calif.) who prepped at Ribet Academy for head coach Pookey Wigington, a member of The Hall's 1989 squad that reached the national final.