One by one, the desperate bid thieves burst the giddy March Madness bubble Shaheen Holloway and his Seton Hall Pirates had been blowing.
The bid thieves rose up against all odds over the weekend and snatched misery from the jaws of jubilation with no remorse, and turned the siren call of the Dance into the cruelest possible tease that left our local victims trapped inside Heartbreak Hotels in South Orange, N.J., and also in Jamaica, Queens, home of Rick Pitino’s St. John’s.
Injustice rained down buzzer-beater 3s from half-court and there will be no dancing for Seton Hall (20-12, 13-7).
Welcome to Seton Hell.
On a day when the Big East had only three teams dancing and every right to call itself the Big Fleeced.
“I was told a very long time ago by a very wise lady, if you don’t got nothing nice to say don’t say nothing at all,” Holloway said on a Zoom call just before 10 p.m.
But he couldn’t help himself.
“I’m heartbroken for my team,” Holloway said. “It was probably one of the worst things to watch, just to watch their face. I actually hurt for them guys.”
He had witnessed Seton Hell up-close and personal inside their campus locker room, his players helpless while watching all the jubilation everywhere outside South Orange, N.J. on the CBS selection show screen. Until at the very end, when they saw SETON HALL, it was alongside the soul-crushing First Four Out.
“Super-disappointed, super-shocked,” Holloway said. “Can’t believe that a team that won 13 games in supposed to be the second-best conference in the country numbers-wise, I don’t think I ever been a part of seeing anything like that. The disrespect that the Big East got shown … it’s mind-boggling to me . … It’s hours later and I still can’t believe it. I still can’t believe that only three teams got in from this conference. That’s a shame, and disrespectful, on every level.”
Holloway was the belle of the ball two years ago when he willed Cinderella Saint Peter’s to the Elite Eight before North Carolina shattered that Impossible Dream.
First team out that finished five-plus games above .500 in the Big East’s 45-year history.
CBS announced Seton Hall was the second team below the cut line, behind only Oklahoma.
“I want to say some things that’s not very nice, so I’m not gonna say anything,” Holloway said.
Seton Hall, picked for ninth in the conference in the preseason coaches’ poll, wasn’t originally expected to be in the conversation. The Pirates finished fourth.
“Any conference in the country, you win 13 games, you’re in,” Holloway said.
The Hall’s 66 NET put them in a precarious position. The Pirates were 5-8 against Quad 1 opponents. Holloway questioned why a win over Villanova had been downgraded.
“How one night it’s Quad 1, next day it’s Quad 2?” he said. “They dropped that much in less than 24 hours? I never heard of that before.
“So you know how many times this year that we coulda really blew teams out and not hold the basketball, or took my starters out with seven, eight, 19 minutes left in the game. Because I’m old school? But it seems like that’s the way to go right now, if you beat teams by X-amount of points, and the NET it goes up. I have no idea about anything anymore. Only thing I know about is hard work and winning games, and it seems like that’s not even good enough anymore.”
Their Big East Tournament quarterfinal loss to St. John’s left them vulnerable.
“It seems like even if we won the St. John’s game, it didn’t matter,” Holloway said. “Have you seen any team finish in the top 4 in the Big East and not get in the Big Dance? It’s unheard of!”
Dan Hurley, not long after UConn beat Marquette for the Big East championship on Saturday night, spoke about the lack of respect for the Big East and said he’d consider it an embarrassment if Seton Hall did not earn an invite to the Dance.
On his way back to the UConn locker room, I asked him why he believes the Hall deserved an invite to the Dance.
“They beat us!” Hurley said, and laughed. “They beat Marquette. They beat a 1 seed, they beat a 2 seed, they won 13 games in either the best or second-best conference in the country.
“It’s clearly a Tournament team.”
Seton Hall upset the Huskies 75-60 back in December.
“They definitely play super-hard, they play tough, they play together,” UConn’s Alex Karaban told The Post. “They’re really a collected unit out there. Coach Shaheen Holloway, he’s done an unbelievable job there. They really used the beginning of the season as a motivating factor. They’ve beaten some of the best teams in the country, they’ve beaten us, they’ve beaten Marquette. Everyone has the utmost respect for them just how tough they are. Kadary Richmond, he was [All-Big East] first team. … We know what they’re capable of.”
Holloway, in his first season at his alma mater a year ago, opted to play in the NIT. He didn’t make that decision on Sunday night to play St. Joe’s Wednesday night at Walsh Gymnasium.
“This year I let the five seniors go in a room and weigh it out and told ’em to come upstairs when they’re ready to talk,” Holloway said.
They will be the No. 1 seed, and he told them if they wanted to he expects them to try to win the NIT championship.
“They all want to play,” Holloway said.
In the meantime, welcome to Seton Hell.
