With the arrival of the final week of the BIG EAST regular season, and with two enormous games on tap with UConn Wednesday night and at St. John’s Saturday night, Seton Hall senior Sandro Mamukelashvili took a minute to reflect on his amazing career in South Orange. But only for a minute. There is too much for Mamu and the Pirates to prepare for this week.
“It went fast, I’m not going to lie to you,” said Mamukelashvili, the pride of Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, about as far away from New Jersey as one could get. “My junior year I was hurt for half a season (wrist injury) and my freshman year went by so quickly. But it definitely felt like four years because each year I grew up and I felt like I was changing on the court and off the court. It’s definitely been an amazing career.”
And now as his Pirates’ career begins to come to a close, the awards and accolades Mamukelashvili is in contention for have begun to pile up. The 6-11, 240-pound senior, who is second in the BIG EAST in scoring at 17.8 points a game and eighth in rebounding at 7.1 per outing. So he is a slam dunk BIG EAST First Team selection, is in the conversation for BIG EAST Player of the Year, is a candidate for the Haggerty Award, given to the top collegiate player in the metropolitan area, and is in the final five for the prestigious Karl Malone Award, given to the nation’s top power forward.
And all that is well and good with Mamukelashvili. But this is March, and March means the world to college basketball players, coaches and fans. Even those players who are not quite as comfortable as they’d like to be in college basketball’s most sacred month.
“For some people it’s fun now but for others you have to win a couple of games first and then it will be fun,” he said. ““We definitely got some work to do. We have two big games ahead of us (so) we got to finish the season strong. It’s definitely a big week coming up and we’re ready for it.”
The Pirates do have some work to do in order to cement an invite to perhaps the most anticipated NCAA Tournament ever, considering how the rug was pulled out from under last year’s Big Dance thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. A 4-0 start to February was followed by back-to-back losses to Georgetown and Butler, which makes Wednesday’s matchup with UConn (coached by former Seton Hall star Dan Hurley) and Saturday’s battle at St. John’s vital to the Pirates’ NCAA cause.
“March started so we’re not thinking about February anymore,” said Mamukelashvili, who has a pair of 30-plus point games on his resume this season, including a 32-point effort in a win over St. John’s in December. “Every team goes through ups and downs. Sometimes we’re really high and sometimes we’re low but I feel we’re practicing really, really hard to prepare for UConn. We’ve just got to stay balanced, not too high and not too low, and know that we have just one mission and that’s to win the game and play together.”
One thing working in Seton Hall's favor is the fact that since the formation of the current BIG EAST in 2013-14, every team with 10 or more conference wins has reached the NCAA Tournament. The Pirates are currently 13-10 overall and, more importantly, 10-6 in conference play.
The second battle of the season with UConn (the Pirates took the first matchup, 80-73, on Feb. 6) will have some added juice for Seton Hall as it will not only be Senior Night but will also mark the first time this season the Pirates will play in front of a home crowd.
“We’re definitely looking forward to our Senior Night,” said Mamukelashvili, who scored the 1,000th point of his career in a Feb. 17 win over DePaul. “Right now we’ve found out we’re having fans, 10 percent capacity, so I’m definitely looking forward to that. My mom will be there, my father and my brothers, my whole family. So it will be an emotional night but at the same time I think it will be a memorable night because we’re going to have fans there and everybody will be cheering for us. So I’m looking forward to it. Just having fans there and having people to make some noise for us will mean the world to us.”
Mamukelashvili points to winning a share of the BIG EAST regular-season title last year as well as back-to-back appearances in the NCAA Tournament following his freshman and sophomore seasons as the highlights of his career. But as you can imagine, being denied a shot at a long run in The Dance last year sticks out as his biggest disappointment.
“One hundred percent,” he said. “Last year we would have been a two or a three seed and had a big chance to go forward in the tournament. So it was definitely disappointing.”
So the mission for Mamukelashvili and the Pirates this week is a simple one: take care of business and then begin to dream about what can happen the rest of March.
“We’re really focused and we’ve been focused all year since Day One,” Mamukelashvili said. “We’re excited, we’re ready to play, we’re optimistic and our energies are always positive. But we have to take care of a couple of things before we start thinking about what’s next. So right now we’re just focused on our next two games.”
And if the Pirates come up big down the stretch, Mamukelashvili sees an opportunity to make up for last year’s missed opportunity at making some special March memories.
“I feel for us the sky’s the limit,” he said. “When we’re hot and we play together, I feel we’re one of the best teams in the country. So for me the perfect ending would be winning the BIG EAST Tournament and then going to the (NCAA) Tournament and making a lot of noise. I think we can do that but I feel like we all need to be on the same page.
And when all is said and done, after the regular season has concluded, a BIG EAST Tournament king has been crowned and his final NCAA Tournament has commenced, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in Mamukelashvili’s world to hear him named the recipient of the Karl Malone Award.
“Oh man, you can’t understand, I’ve dreamed about it,” he said. “I’ve worked for it and that was one of my goals this year. Of course my team goals come first, but there are also individual goals when you go into the season. But being in the top five already means the world to me because it shows how hard I’ve worked and that other people appreciate my work.
And Mamukelashvili is in some pretty good company in that final five as he joins Villanova’s Jeremiah Robinson-Earl, Gonzaga’s Drew Timme, Indiana’s Trayce Jackson-Davis and Justin Champagnie of Pittsburgh.
“It’s amazing company,” he said. “And Jeremiah Robinson-Earl is also there so a big shout out to him.”