With postseason looming, meet the Seton Hall supporting cast who must help Myles Powell

As No. 12 Seton Hall heads into Saturday’s titanic Big East showdown at No. 10 Villanova (2:30 p.m., Fox), the basketball world knows all about Myles Powell.

The star guard from Trenton is the face of the Pirates and is coming off his latest offensive explosion, a 34-point outburst in Wednesday’s 78-71 victory at Georgetown.

A legitimate candidate for various National Player of the Year awards, Powell ranks ninth nationally in scoring in Division 1 at 22 points per game while his NBA Draft stock has been on the rise, too. Powell is the major reason why coaches like Villanova’s Jay Wright and Georgetown’s Patrick Ewing are calling the Pirates (17-5, 9-1 Big East) a legitimate Final Four contender.

But they also point to Powell’s supporting cast for its role in the team’s rousing success so far. Powell is quick to praise his teammates during post-game news conferences, and seems to feel genuine joy for them when they succeed.

“I think we’re showing everybody across the country that we’re not just the Myles Powell show,” Powell said recently.

Here’s a closer look at Powell’s supporting cast:

Romaro Gill, C, 7-2, 250:

Talk about speaking softly and carrying a big stick. The quiet 25-year-old Jamaican has to be considered the odds-on favorite to win Big East Most Improved Player honors at this point.

“Romaro Gill’s development within the course of this season is the most dramatic of any player in the Big East,” Steve Lavin, a Big East analyst on Fox and the former St. John’s and UCLA head coach, told NJ Advance Media.

Seton Hall leads the Big East at 7.2 blocks per game in league play, and Gill is responsible for 4.5 of those per game. The next closest person is DePaul’s Paul Reed at 2.2 blocks per Big East contest.

But the big man isn’t just wreaking havoc on opposing offenses, he’s become an offensive force himself, scoring often on screen-and-roll lob dunks which are virtually unstoppable. He’s averaging 10.4 points and 6.1 rebounds in league play. Although his offensive production has dipped in the last three games, Gill scored 17 points in three of six league games during a stretch in January.

“I just go out there to have fun, bring all the energy that I can and when I get the ball, score it,” Gill said.

One NBA scout recently told NJ Advance Media that Gill will have a chance to make an NBA roster given his play this season.

“Someone will give him a shot,” the scout said. “Why not?”

Quincy McKnight, G, 6-4, 185:

The Bridgeport, Conn. native showed his toughness this week when, after leaving the Xavier game with a left knee injury, he returned against Georgetown to put up 10 assists and eight points in 22 minutes. In league play, he’s averaging 11.1 points and a Big East-best 7.6 assists.

Had he been forced to miss an extended period with a knee injury, there’s no telling how it would’ve impacted the Pirates. Luckily, they won’t have to find out.

On the defensive side, McKnight was recently named one of 15 finalists for the Naismith Defensive Player of the Year award. As a team, Seton Hall ranks third in scoring defense in league play at 66.9 points per game.

“He is up there [on the toughness scale],” Pirates coach Kevin Willard said Wednesday. “He does so many things that don’t show up on the stat sheet. I think the defensive side has been his personality so the way we’ve been playing defensively, I think is a direct reflection of how he plays on the defensive end.”

Sandro Mamukelashvili, F, 6-11, 240:

“Mamu” is arguably Seton Hall’s second-best player behind Powell and when he went down in December with a fractured wrist on his right (non-shooting) hand, he was averaging 12.3 points and 5.3 rebounds per game.

In his absence, players like Gill, Jared Rhoden and, to a lesser extent, Tyrese Samuel flourished and made Seton Hall a stronger, deeper outfit.

Now with the native of Georgia back close to 100 percent, the sky seems like the limit for the Pirates.

Willard inserted him back into the starting lineup Wednesday after the Pirates were slaughtered on the glass against Xavier, and he played 32 minutes, putting up 12 rebounds, eight points and two assists.

“For us to be as good as we can, Sandro to me is a special player so I think the big thing was making sure that everybody was in a position to play well,” Willard said.

Jared Rhoden, G/F, 6-6, 210:

When Mamukelashvili went down in December, Rhoden was thrust into the power-forward spot and questions loomed.

How would the sophomore adjust to the new position? How much would Seton Hall’s offense struggle without “Mamu”?

The answers are “well” and “not very much.”

After averaging 3.4 points and 2.6 rebounds as a freshman, the Baldwin, N.Y. native is averaging 9.2 points and 6.5 boards as a sophomore. He had 13 points and eight rebounds in the win at No. 5 Butler, went for 14 and 11 in the Providence win and most recently tallied 12 and nine against the Hoyas.

With Mamu’s return to the starting lineup at the four spot on Wednesday, Rhoden is now back to playing his natural wing spot and started at the three against Georgetown. But Powell credited him for playing the four while “Mamu” was out.

“What Jared has done as a sophomore, it’s amazing,” Powell said. “He went from being a guard to having to throw away everything he knows as a guard and everything he learned in the first two years to now he’s playing the four. And when you do that, that's a huge jump because you’re not doing nothing the same.”

Myles Cale, G/F, 6-6, 210:

The soft-spoken junior from Delaware has all the tools to be Seton Hall’s second-or third-leading scorer, but he currently ranks sixth on the team in that department.

He scored 16 points in back-to-back wins at DePaul and over Georgetown to start the Big East season, showing that he could step up when needed. He knocked down five straight 3-pointers to start the first Georgetown game and was a big reason why they rolled Ewing’s team 78-62 on Jan. 3.

“My teammates [have] just been supporting me [with my] struggles throughout the season,” Cale said that night. “They knew it was going to come. They just said take my time and it was going to go in, so I just kept shooting and taking my time and they believed in me.”

But since then Cale has reached double-figures just once in eight games and on Wednesday he was out of the starting lineup in favor of Rhoden. If the Pirates are going to fulfill expectations and go deep in March, they likely need more consistency from Cale.

Anthony Nelson, G, 6-4, 180:

As the second-string point guard behind McKnight, Nelson is supposed to bring that New York City toughness that Willard has come to appreciate in many of his recruits, including Isaiah Whitehead and Khadeen Carrington. He also spent a year at South Kent (CT) prep school, the same place where Powell played his final season before college.

All that said, Nelson has definitely seen his role diminish during Big East play. He hasn’t played more than nine minutes in the last four games, a stretch during which he’s combined to account for six points and two assists.

It’s unclear what’s transpired with Nelson recently since he earlier showed flashes of strong play. In the win over then-No. 7 Maryland, Nelson went for 10 points and four assists in a game in which Powell sat out with a concussion. Nelson then logged 12 points and seven assists in the following win over Prairie View A&M.

Shavar Reynolds, G, 6-2, 190:

In August 2018, Willard upgraded the Manchester native from walk-on to scholarship status, and the move has paid off in a big way.

Coming off the bench, Reynolds has nearly doubled his scoring output to 3.7 points per game this season, while also adding 2.0 rebounds. He played 20 minutes in the Georgetown game, 17 against DePaul and 14 against Providence, showing that Willard has more faith in him than Nelson at this point.

Defensively, he played a key in “holding” Marquette star Markus Howard to 27 points 8-of-20 shooting in the Jan. 11 win at Prudential Center.

"It's about time Shavar guarded somebody else like that," Powell quipped that night. "I mean, I get that treatment every day in practice so to finally see him come out and make somebody else work like that, I'm happy for him."

Tyrese Samuel, F, 6-10, 220:

The Montreal native has intrigued NBA scouts this season with his combination of size, mobility and ability to shoot the deep ball.

Samuel had his breakout game with 12 points and eight rebounds while shooting 2-of-4 from deep in the win over Prairie View A&M on Dec. 22. In Big East play, he had seven points and six rebounds in the DePaul win, and eight points and five boards in the Marquette game. Recently, his minutes and production have tailed off as Willard has tightened up his rotation.

Going forward, he could be an X-factor in the Big East and NCAA Tournaments simply because he’s a matchup problem for his opponents and is shooting 38 percent from deep.

Ike Obiagu, C, 7-2, 265:

Willard says he loves to look at the faces of opposing team’s big men when he subs out Gill only to bring in Obiagu, another 7-2 shot-blocker who sat out last season after transferring from Florida State.

While Obiagu has not had the impact that Gill has this season, he provides valuable minutes off the bench and an additional shot-blocker when Gill is off the floor.

For the season, he’s averaging 3.0 points, 2.4 rebounds and 1.4 blocks per game. Assuming he returns for his junior season, he should have a much bigger role next year when Gill, Powell and McNnight are all gone.

Adam Zagoria is a freelance reporter who covers Seton Hall and NJ college basketball for NJ Advance Media.