Myles Powell still has three regular-season games left in his senior season before the madness of March begins.
So he doesn’t want to think too much about his final NCAA Tournament just yet, but he confesses he wants his Pirates to stay local by opening the Big Dance in Albany and then potentially moving on to Madison Square Garden for the East Regional March 27 and 29.
The Pirates (20-7, 12-3 Big East) on Monday moved up to No. 13 in the AP Top 25 poll from No. 16, which bodes well for their NCAA Tournament seeding and chances of playing locally. ESPN’sJoe Lunardi on Monday had the Pirates as the 3 seed in the East opening against No. 14 Hofstra, with the chance to move on to the Garden if they beat the Pride and the winner between No. 6 Ohio State and No. 11 Northern Iowa. Lunardi has Duke as the 2 seed in the East.
“We’ll either be in New York in the East and that will be a blessing for us and we’ll play the Sweet 16 and the Elite Eight in the Garden,” Powell said Sunday after going for 18 points, five rebounds and four assists in an 81-65 beatdown of St. John’s.
“I’m not really trying to look past the Big East. Our last three games are [against] Top-20 teams. It’s pretty hard to look past at Marquette, at Creighton and Villanova coming here so March is right around the corner but we still have a lot of basketball to play and our conference is one of the best conferences. You just never know so it’s kind of hard to look past these guys that we have coming up.”
Three Big East teams cracked the top 25, with Seton Hall joined by No. 10 Creighton and No. 12 Villanova. Marquette and Butler dropped out.
Kansas took over the No. 1 spot in the poll after beating Baylor on Saturday. Baylor fell to No. 2, followed by Gonzaga, Dayton and San Diego State.
Five of the top 10 teams lost this past weekend, including then-No. 2 Gonzaga, then-No. 4 and previously unbeaten San Diego State, then-No. 7 Maryland and then-No. 9 Penn State, which will now host Rutgers on Wednesday as the No. 16-ranked team.
The Pirates hold a one-game lead over Creighton atop the Big East Conference and have a week off before visiting Marquette on Saturday on what will be Markus Howard’s Senior Night. After that, Powell and fellow seniors Romaro Gill and Quincy McKnight will be honored during Seton Hall’s Senior Night on March 4 against Villanova. Seton Hall closes out the regular season March 7 at Creighton.
“I don’t think there’s anybody playing better basketball than Creighton in the country right now,” Pirates coach Kevin Willard said. “The way I’m looking at it is three great opportunities to kind of solidify where we’re going to get seeded in the NCAA Tournament. It gives us a chance to win the Big East championship, and it also gives us a chance to get a great seeding in the Big East tournament, so it’s three great opportunities.”
The Pirates are in the mix for a potential 2 or 3 seed in the Big Dance, and Powell knows that should help them significantly next month. In the previous four years under Willard, Seton Hall has never been higher than a 6 seed.
“We had a tough seed last year [at No. 10],” Powell said. “We played a very good Wofford team, we would’ve played Kentucky next. The year before that we played N.C. State and then we played Kansas; t was pretty much a home game for Kansas and then my freshman year we played Arkansas we got a bad call with Desi [Rodriguez] fouled. So the seeding, it helps.”
POWELL SAYS WILLARD DOESN’T GET ENOUGH RESPECT
With the win over St. John’s, Willard is now the first Division 1 coach in New Jersey history to notch five straight 20-win campaigns.
Willard, 44, has accomplished something that Honey Russell, Pete Carril, Tom Young and P.J. Carlesimo never did.
During that run, he also won the 2016 Big East Tournament title and is about to take the Pirates to their fifth straight NCAA Tournament. The Pirates have just one win in the tournament during that stretch, but Powell says his coach doesn’t get enough credit.
"I've always said, I don't think Coach Willard gets enough credit for what he's doing here," Powell said. "He's been like a father figure to me. I'm happy for him, but I know he's not going to get complacent with that."
For his part, Willard has always played down his accomplishments and said that Carlesimo remains the gold standard among Seton Hall coaches after leading the school to the 1989 title game.
“It means Myles Powell’s a hell of a player, Angel Delgado’s really good, Isaiah Whitehead’s really good,” Willard cracked. “I’ve been blessed to have a lot of really, really good players over however long I’ve been here, but I think over the last five, especially with the groups that have been with me and worked hard, I’ve had some really good players.”
Adam Zagoria is a freelance reporter who covers Seton Hall and NJ college basketball for NJ Advance Media.