Pirates Edge Wildcats In Preseason Poll
By SEAN BRENNAN
Special to
BIGEAST.com
All good things eventually come to an end, right?
Summer vacations. A good meal. The “Big Bang Theory.” Even that way-too-short relationship with that girl who you knew right from the start was way out of your league.
Yup, it happens. And at Thursday’s BIG EAST Media Day at Madison Square Garden, it happened to Villanova.
The Wildcats, the long-time residents of the BIG EAST Preseason Coaches Poll penthouse, were handed a “must vacate” order this season as the Cats saw their streak of five straight seasons as the preseason conference top dogs (or cats) come to an end by the slimmest of margins.
So who dethroned the mighty Wildcats? Who dared to storm the BIG EAST castle and plunder their way to the top? That would be your
Seton Hall Pirates, as they grabbed 77 points in the poll, one better than Villanova, in voting by the league coaches.
“I’m excited,” Pirates head coach Kevin Willard said. “I’m excited for Myles Powell. I think he has the opportunity to show everybody that he is the best player in college basketball. I think he has an opportunity to be drafted (and) I think he’s going to have a monster year.”
It’s been quite awhile since the Pirates landed such preseason honors. The last time came prior to the 1992-93 season. To put that in perspective, that was five years before Powell, the Pirates’ All-Everything star, was even born. But there is hope for a very special year in South Orange, N.J. this year.
“Oh for sure,” said Powell, who sported a pair of most sparkly silver shoes you’ll see outside a Broadway show kick line. “My guys know I could have went pro but I came back to be with them and go through the whole college experience one last time.”
Seton Hall returns four starters from last year’s 20-win team. Chief among those returnees, of course, is Powell, who averaged 23.1 points a game last season, good for second in the BIG EAST, while also landing on the All-BIG EAST First Team.
And guess who was selected as the BIG EAST Preseason Player of the Year? (Spoiler alert: We were just talking about him). Yes, it’s Powell.
“I was surprised,” Powell said. “Especially with (Marquette’s) Markus (Powell) already winning it last year and then coming back this year.”
Powell will join fellow returnees Myles Cale (10.2 points a year ago), Quincy McKnight (9.4 ppg.) and 6-11 Sandro Mamukeliashvili, who posted 8.9 points, 7.8 rebounds and who will henceforth be known as simply Sandro.
“I think (being picked No. 1 in the poll) is a great honor,” Willard said. “I think it’s exciting for the players, I think it’s exciting for the university and the program. It shows you how far we’ve come.”
Lurking in the second spot are the aforementioned
Villanova Wildcats, who will be without the departed Phil Booth and Eric Paschal this season but do return a young core that will eventually morph into the next dominant Villanova team the way the Wildcats always seem to do. (Villanova is 90-18 in BIG EAST games the past six seasons, have won five of the last six regular-season titles and the last three BIG EAST Tournament championships. So yes, they will morph all right).
Tops among the returning Wildcats will be junior guard Collin Gillespie, who averaged 10.9 points last season and is the unquestioned leader of this group of Wildcats.
“I just think there are a lot of great teams in this conference, there are a lot of veterans in the conference this year because a lot of guys came back,” Gillespie said. “But we’re not really focused on the preseason poll. We just worry about being the best Villanova basketball team we can be by the end of the year.”
Gillespie will be joined by junior Jermaine Samuels, who averaged 6.4 points and 5.4 rebounds a season ago, and sophomore Saddiq Bey, a member of the BIG EAST All-Freshman team last season after logging an 8.2 points-per-game average with 5.1 rebounds. And like Gillespie, Samuels doesn’t pay much attention to the preseason poll.
“I think Seton Hall is a great team and they deserve to be at the top of the poll but we’re just focused on being the best team we can be by the end of the season,” Samuels said.
Xavier grabbed the poll’s No. 3 spot with 52 points as the Musketeers return an abundance of talent led by junior Naji Marshall, who led Xavier in scoring (14.7) while finishing second in rebounds with 7.2 per game.
Marshall will have lots of his friends back from a team that was playing its best ball late in the season. The Musketeers won six of their final seven league games to finish 9-9 in the conference. Both backcourt studs return in junior Paul Scruggs and senior Quentin Goodin. Scruggs averaged 12.3 points last season while Goodin, the savvy floor general, is an elite passer who could really pad his assists totals this season. Add in big man Tyrique Jones (11.3 points, 7.7 rebounds) and there is plenty of reason for optimism in Cincinnati.
“We’re very excited for this year,” Xavier head coach Travis Steele said.
He was even more excited when he talked about his returning backcourt of Goodin and Scruggs.
“That’s huge,” Steele said. “It’s a guard’s game and we have veteran guards in Quentin being a senior and Paul being a junior. They’ve played big moments in big games which is important.”
Marquette and
Providence tied for the cleanup spot in the BIG EAST’s preseason lineup with each team receiving 50 points.
It was a good news/bad news offseason for the Golden Eagles as reigning BIG EAST Player of the Year Markus Howard announced he would return to Marquette for his senior season. But then the Hauser brothers, Sam and Joey, abruptly decided to transfer and, well, that was shocking to say the least.
But Howard’s return should still translate into much success for coach Steve Wojciechowski, who guided the Golden Eagles to a 24-10 overall mark and 12-6 in the BIG EAST, good for second place. Howard led the BIG EAST in scoring at 25 points a game last year, led the conference with 120 three-pointers, broke his own BIG EAST scoring record with a 53-point performance against Creighton and now sits just 31 points away from becoming Marquette’s all-time leading scorer.
But as brilliant as he is, Howard can’t carry Marquette all by his lonesome and he won’t have to as the Golden Eagles will be looking to get some offensive help from Koby McEwen, a transfer from Utah State, who averaged 15 points a game two seasons ago. Sacar Amin can play lockdown defense and averaged 8.3 points while Ed Morrow will do the bulk of the heavy lifting inside.
Providence saw its streak of five straight trips to the NCAA Tournament snapped last season but did manage to get an NIT invite after going 18-16. So, will missing out on the NCAA Tournament last season be the fuel that ignites the Friars this season? Head coach Ed Cooley hopes so?
“We’ve talked about taking it one game at a time and let’s try to get back to that magic carpet that puts you in the field of 68 and let’s see if we can make a run,” Cooley said. “So yes, we do talk about that a little bit.”
The good news for the Friars is the return of the versatile Alpha Diallo. The 6-7 senior averaged 16 points and 8.1 rebounds last season and will be looking to go out in a blaze of glory in his final season. The bad news? The offense has to come from somewhere as last season Providence finished last in the conference in field goal percentage and scoring.
To that end, Cooley went out and brought in UMass transfer Luwane Pipkins. It was a case of if you can’t beat him, have him join you as Pipkins torched the Friars for 20, 30 and 26 points in three meetings with Providence while with the Minutemen.
Georgetown landed in the sixth spot in the pole but just a point behind both Marquette and Providence. Last season youth was served in D.C. as the freshman trio of Mac McClung, James Akinjo and Josh LeBlanc all landed on the BIG EAST All-Freshman Team. Akinjo went a step further and was named the conference’s Freshman of the Year after averaging 13.4 points and a league-best 6.0 assists. So what does he have in store for an encore?
“All of my goals are team-oriented,” Akinjo said. “I want to win the BIG EAST regular-season title then win the BIG EAST Tournament championship and then I want to go far in the NCAA Tournament. As for me, I just want to keep growing and getting better.”
Speaking of growing, the Hoyas will make way for 7-0 center Omer Yurtseven, a transfer from North Carolina State who averaged 13.5 points and 6.7 rebounds for the Wolfpack two seasons ago. Head coach Patrick Ewing also brought in a trio of 6-11 freshmen in Timothy Ighoefe, Qudus Wahab and Malcolm Wilson. So there will be times when BIG EAST opponents may feel as if they are playing in the Land of the Giants.
“It’s going to be a dogfight,” Hoyas head coach Patrick Ewing said. “It was a dogfight last year and I expect it to be again this year.”
With Georgetown having the biggest dogs.
Creighton snagged the No. 7 spot with 45 points and the Bluejays return four starters from a team that went 20-15 and 9-9 in the conference a year ago. Gone is the dependable Martin Krampelj but the Jays’ nest is still full of talent.
Ty-Shon Alexander averaged a team-high 15.7 points a game and was lethal from long range as he nailed 97 three-pointers. It was a season that saw him rewarded with an All-BIG EAST Honorable Mention.
The Bluejays drained 372 three-pointers last season and all the key culprits are back. Aside from Alexander, there is Mitch Ballock (95 threes, 11.1 points, 45.5% on threes), savvy veteran Davion Mintz (9.7 ppg., 41.6% on threes) and Marcus Zegararowski, who averaged 10.4 points and secured a spot on the league’s All-Freshman Team.
So it should be business as usual for the Bluejays again this season with a plethora of long-range options.
“We’re focusing more on defense now,” Alexander said. “But we’ll still be running and getting off a lot of shots, for sure.”
Butler comes in at No. 8 with 21 points and there is nowhere to go but up for a Bulldogs team that is coming off just its third losing season in the past 26 years. It was also a season that saw Butler fail to reach the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2014. But hope springs eternal and a lot of that hope for a major turnaround comes from the comfort of having the dynamic backcourt of Kamar Baldwin and Aaron Thompson back together for one more season.
Baldwin, a senior, was a BIG EAST All-Second Team pick last year after averaging almost 19 points a game in conference play. He is also poised to become the fourth player in Butler history to surpass 2,000 career points. Thompson, a junior, logged 260 assists last season and finished fourth in the conference with 6.1 per game.
“Last year motivates us because we know we can be better than last year,” Baldwin said. “But we’re not looking in the rearview mirror. We’re just focusing on this year and trying to be the best we can.”
St. John’s and new head coach Mike Anderson grabbed the No. 9 spot with 19 votes. Perhaps no program saw more turnover than the Johnnies, who not only saw Chris Mullin step down as head coach, but also saw the departure of Shamorie Ponds, Justin Simon and Marvin Clark II.
But the cupboard is not totally bare as senior Mustapha Heron and junior L.J. Figueroa return to form a nice nucleus. Heron averaged 14.6 points while Figueroa, the quintessential stat stuffer, averaged 14.4 points, 6.4 rebounds and 1.8 steals while shooting 38.3 % from three-point range.
Being picked ninth will serve as motivation for the transforming Johnnies this season, according to Heron.
“That will definitely motivate us. The fact that somebody didn’t think we were in the top half of the conference,” Heron said. “But where they ranked us is from our showing last year so we can’t be mad at that. We just have to go out and change the narrative.”
Finally there is
DePaul, coming in at 10th with 11 points. The Blue Demons’ 19 overall wins and seven BIG EAST victories were both the program’s highest totals since the 2006-07 season. DePaul will miss mad bomber Max Strus, but the Demons return Paul Reed, the BIG EAST’s Most Improved Player a year ago after logging 12.3 points and 8.5 rebounds in his sophomore season. Eli Cain and his 9.1 points also returns.
“We’re ready and we’re poised to take the next step,” DePaul head coach Dave Leitao said. “But the league will have a whole lot to say about it because every night is going to be a challenge. But certain things are going to have to happen before I can just say ‘I’m confident this is what we’re going to be able to do.’”
Leitao also corralled a top-flight recruiting class led by 6-7 Romeo Weems, Michigan’s Mr. Basketball. So despite being picked 10th, things certainly seem to be turning around in Chicago.