PROVIDENCE — Trouble appears to be brewing with a Seton Hall team that has designs on a deep run during March Madness.
After the team’s second straight loss, at Providence Saturday night, coach Kevin Willard vowed to make lineup changes over what he called the “bad attitudes” of several players.
“We have some guys with bad attitudes right now, to be perfectly honest with you,” Willard said during his postgame radio interview according to the Asbury Park Press. “When you have a bad attitude and you’re pouting and complaining that you’re not playing enough time, yet your team is 10-2, you have issues."
Willard did not name the players he was referencing, but Anthony Nelson, Myles Cale and Ike Obiagu all played sparingly against Providence, while Sandro Mamukelashvili did not start the second half after starting the game. Nelson, Cale and Obiagu combined for zero points, zero assists and three rebounds in the game.
“It’s amazing to me that, when we lost to Xavier I saw a team that bounced back and was hungry to go to Georgetown and get it," Willard said. “When we lost to Creighton the other day and we played terrible (in practice), and I’m sitting in practice and I’m thinking, I’ve got a guy moody that doesn’t want to go through practice who hardly played. I have another guy who played 25 minutes that can’t make a shot and didn’t have a rebound. I have another guy that got embarrassed defensively.”
It may become clearer when No. 10 Seton Hall hosts No. 19 Butler on Wednesday who exactly is out of the rotation.
"I will make sure of it ... that there will be a very large correction,” Willard said. “... The bench is going to get shortened. Either you’re going to show up and play or you’re not. I’m really disappointed in a few guys who, either they regain their focus or I’ll just play six.”
Seton Hall did not make any players available after the loss, and the Pirates looked glum as they left the locker room.
Seton Hall (18-7, 10-3 Big East) led the conference by three games after winning at Villanova on Feb. 8 for the first time since 1994. But that lead is now down to one game over Creighton and one-and-a-half over Villanova. The Pirates were picked to win the conference narrowly over the Wildcats.
By the time he spoke with reporters postgame at Dunkin’ Donuts Center, Willard appeared to have calmed down slightly from his radio rant and focused more on the fact that his team continues to get down big early and also discussed the brutal upcoming schedule.
The Pirates trailed by 25 points in the first half before clawing back and making it a game in the second half thanks largely to Myles Powell’s 27 points on 9-of-20 shooting. Quincy McKnight also had 14 points and Jared Rhoden 10 points and eight rebounds.
Alpha Diallo poured in a career-high 35 points with 10 rebounds for the Friars.
“It’s happened to us a little too often, that we’ve gotten down in the first half a lot,” Willard said outside the locker room. “And we’ve been able to kind of claw our way back. We just couldn’t do it, we just couldn’t get over the hump today.”
Seton Hall has five conference games left and four are against ranked teams — home for No. 19 Butler, home for St. John’s, at No. 18 Marquette, home for No. 15 Villanova and at No. 23 Creighton.
“Yeah, it’s tough,” Willard said. “There’s no hiding on it. We gotta go out and we gotta refocus, kind of get back in and get back to what we were doing. We were defending at a very high level for the first eight games and now we’re not defending very good. I think that’s probably the biggest difference, we gotta get back to defending and being better on the ball.”
Seton Hall still maintains an impressive NCAA Tournament résumé and still leads the Big East. But Willard will have to manage what the called the “moody” and “pouting” players so that it doesn’t submarine the team during the stretch drive.
“I just think that our league is so tough top to bottom that if you’re not ready to play,” he said, “you’re going to get smacked around.”
Adam Zagoria is a freelance reporter who covers Seton Hall and NJ college basketball for NJ Advance Media.