Credit: Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports
NEW YORK — There was a lot going on at Seton Hall last season, and a lot of it wasn’t very positive.
After a 13-3 start, the Pirates went 3-12 the rest of the year as reports surfaced of a fractured locker room, pitting the heralded freshmen class against some of the upperclassmen. Two upperclass guards — Jaren Sina and Sterling Gibbs — transferred out as Coach Kevin Willard’s program appeared to be at a crossroads.
Every time Isaiah Whitehead and his teammates looked on Twitter, they saw more reports and rumors about bad news swirling around their program.
“Just how many rumors there was, I don’t think it was necessarily truth,” Whitehead, a Preseason All-Big East Second Team selection, said on Wednesday at Big East Media Day at Madison Square Garden.
“There was a lot of people coming out with stuff saying things like it’s upperclassmen versus the freshmen and after every Tweet that you read about that, it always says ‘sources said.’ It doesn’t say it’s a fact, so by all of us seeing that we really don’t know what to believe.”
As a result, and in an effort to minimize distractions, Whitehead said he and his teammates have decided to stay off of Twitter beginning Oct. 31 — the date of the team’s first exhibition game against Baruch.
“I think we all agreed after Oct. 31, there’s no more social media,” Whitehead said. “Just staying off of there will help out a lot, just not knowing what people are thinking will help out a lot and just trying to focus on the season.”
Not surprisingly, Willard is all for the idea.
“I’m in favor of everyone getting off Twitter,” he said. “I’m probably going to get off it pretty soon, yeah. It’s nice to have the information flow, but it is a distraction at times. You can really get overwhelmed with trying to find out what’s going on here, what’s going on here. My biggest thing with these guys is keep them to stay focused with how well they can play.”
Asked if it was Whitehead’s idea to cut out social media, Willard cracked, “He is the king of Twitter, he’s had some doozies on there. We’ve talked so much about staying focused and I think they all understand how unfocused 140 characters can make you.”
Willard said he thinks Twitter is predominantly negative.
“For every two good things that someone says, there’s going to be seven things that someone negative says,” he said. “It’s unfiltered, you don’t have to put your name out there. You have some guy that’s ‘Joey Gumbatz’ and there’s guys out there that just constantly kill you and after a while the negativity really kind of beats you down, especially after these kids are giving everything they’re having.”
He added that Twitter distracts his players at key times.
“When you watch when they’re on it, it’s 1 o’clock in the morning, it’s 1:30 in the morning,” Willard said. “We talk a lot about about how much rest these kids need to get. You can’t get rest if your phone’s constantly dinging, and they’re phones constantly ding. So the more they’re off their phones, the more I’m in favor of it.”
So they will stay off Twitter for the whole season starting on All Hallows Eve?
“Yeah,” Whitehead said.
How hard will that be to stay off Twitter completely?
“Not at all,” he said. “We all are committed to this and we all are going to try to follow through.”
What if you want to see a Steph Curry dunk or something?
“We’ll just watch SportsCenter,” Whitehead said. “We’re just trying to stay off of it as much as possible, maybe we’ll go on the NBA page once or twice. But I think I speak of social media just as us, what are we doing..We just won’t look into things like that [about Seton Hall], just try to be positive. We don’t care about what people have to say as long as we’re all one.”
St. John’s coach Chris Mullin and Seton Hall coach Kevin Willard discuss their plans for the 2015 season at Big East Media Day on Wednesday in New York.
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