DENVER — Ten years of waiting boiled down to 40 minutes of game play for the Seton Hall Pirates Thursday night at the Pepsi Center.
The No. 6 seeded Pirates were bounced from their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2006 as quickly as they got there – losing to No. 11 seed Gonzaga, 68-52, in the first round.
Isaiah Whitehead, the man responsible for steering the Pirate ship to a Big East Tournament championship, ended the game with 10 points. Whitehead shot 4-24 from the field, including an NCAA Tournament record-tying 0–for-10 clip from three-point range.
This season, the Hall went as Whitehead did. On this night, his ineffectiveness did his team in.
“I feel it was just an off night,” Whitehead said. “I faced some of the toughest defensive groups in the country playing in the Big East. This is probably my worst shooting performance. I think it was just more missing shots. I had some good looks, but just couldn’t knock ’em down.”
Said Pirates coach Kevin Willard: “He had some good looks. He got to the rim. You know, he just couldn’t find it. I give him credit, though. He kept being aggressive. He’s been aggressive all year. Sometimes you just don’t make shots.
The front court of Seton Hall got man-handled by projected first-round pick Domantas Sabonis of Gonzaga. The 6-foot-11 Lithuanian registered 21 points, 16 rebounds, 4 assists and 2 blocks. Willard saw more tonight than even he anticipated.
“I thought he battled,” Willard said. “He was much more physical than he looked on film. He battled in there. I thought he did a really good job of being physical on the rebounding aspect. That’s what I was really impressed with him about.”
Seton Hall got out-rebounded by a 48-34 margin, and the lack of presence on the glass helped contribute to a season low scoring output for the Pirates.
Graduate senior transfer Derrick Gordon, competing for his third team in the NCAA Tournament, played his last college game in Denver Thursday night. The lone senior in the mix of the studded sophomore group called his own number when asked what went wrong with the Pirates.
“We were just being too fast on offense and not being patient with things like we usually are,” Gordon said. “Especially just the first-round game, so this was quite new for everybody. That’s my job. I should have stepped in and be able to calm everything down. But sometimes things don’t go the way you plan on.”
Nothing seemed to go right for the Pirates down the stretch. Angel Delgado and fellow sophomore Ismael Sanogo got tangled up and separated his shoulder.
“Ish popped his shoulder out again,” Willard said. “It’s the third time this year. He’s fine. We popped it back in. He’ll get an MRI [Friday], hopefully [Friday] night. He’s bounced back from it before, he’s been out for a couple weeks, but he’ll be back.”
Following the end of the regular season and a white-hot stretch of games from Whitehead, talk of his jump to the NBA following the season began to grow.
After Thursday night’s performance, those expectations may deserve to be tempered. But Whitehead didn’t deliver a definitive answer one way or another. He cited that he is yet to make a decision and still needs to talk to his mother. He is not projected on the 2016 or ’17 draft boards by DraftExpress.com, but he could opt to test the waters and work out for an NBA team or try to attend the Chicago Pre-Draft Combine.
“I mean, we accomplished some amazing things, so it’s probably a lot of amazing things that you guys didn’t think we can do,” Whitehead said.
“It’s been an unbelievable year with this group. A really young group. I mean, we only can look at the future.”
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