The last time Wagner played two Big East teams in one season, they went on to win the Northeast Conference championship during the 2002-3 season.
Nine years later, head coach Dan Hurley signed the Seahawks up for out-of-conference tilts at defending champion UConn and Friday at No. 15 Pitt.
Could history repeat itself?
The Seahawks hope so.
Picked fourth in the NEC, they are currently 7-3 with wins at Princeton and Penn, and losses to UConn, LIU and Lehigh.
Hurley scheduled the Big East games to give his team a measuring stick against arguably the nation’s top conference.
“I think it will expose for us the things that we need to get better at,” Hurley told SNY.tv in advance of the UConn game in which Wagner acquitted itself well before losing 78-66. “We’re not delusional. We’re in Year 2 of rebuilding of what was when we took over one of the five to seven worst teams in the country out of the three hundred and fifty whatever.
“We’re where we’d like to be in Year 2. This game is part of our maturation process as a program and we gotta learn from it. And we gotta go there to compete.”
Featuring a rebuilt squad under Hurley and his older brother Bobby, Wagner has a balanced scoring attack with guards Jonathon Williams (13.9 ppg), Tyler Murray (13.4) and Latif Rivers (12.9) all averaging double-figures.
Hurley himself has several connections to Pitt.
Pitt sophomore forward Lamar Patterson played his senior year of high school under Hurley at St. Benedict’s. That team finished 24-7 and ranked No. 7 nationally.
As a player for Seton Hall and an assistant coach for Rutgers, Hurley is 7-7 all-time against Pitt.
As a Seton Hall freshman in 1991-1992, Hurley played against Pitt point guard and current Arizona head coach Sean Miller.
Panthers head coach Jamie Dixon was an assistant coach on the 2002-2003 team that beat Wagner. Dixon took over as head coach of the program 25 days later on April 15. That match-up was the only time Dixon, a TCU graduate, faced Wagner.
Pitt, meantime, is without point guard Travon Woodall (groin strain and abdominal tear), who played for Bob Hurley, Dan’s father, on St. Anthony’s undefeated 2007-8 team.
The Panthers are also without freshman forward Khem Birch, who left the program last week. He has yet to request his official release and sources told SNY.tv it is possible Birch could return to the program.
Wagner is just 2-24 all-time, against Big East teams and has lost 13-straight since defeating Rutgers 80-78 on December 16, 1995 at the RAC.
Yet if the experience of playing UConn and Pitt translates into another NEC championship, Hurley will surely make the tradeoff.
