Pirates rout Jaspers in a chippy affair

Seton Hall hit the court Saturday to close out the nonconference portion of their schedule before heading into the ever long battle of attrition that is Big East play. The Pirates played host to the Jaspers of Manhattan on the floor of the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.

While some were hoping for a Manhattan win or at least a close affair in the end the Pirates proved to be too much for the Jaspers winning by a score of 74 to 62, in the process also ending the rotating tit-for-tat win loss streak against the Manhattan in the relatively recent history of this match-up.

While the scoreline gives way to a rather easy walkabout for Seton Hall, this one did get a little chippy at the end of the first half as Manhattan’s Zane Waterman and Angel Delgado both went up for the rebound then came down locked in each other’s arms trying to grapple for the ball. In the process of this happening, Myles Powell decided to jump into the developing fracas by taking a swat at the ball in Waterman’s possession, but in the end appearing to swat at Waterman’s neck and shoulder area. With all of this brewing Delgado and Waterman continue a bit of pushing and shoving with into the basket.

In the aftermath, both Myles Powell and Rich Williams were ejected from the game and Waterman and Delgado were given offsetting technical fouls. Waterman and Delgado were by far and away the best players on the floor today too, but more on that in a little bit.

As a team, Seton Hall shot the ball at a rate of 44% from the floor, 28% from three point range, and 68% from the foul line. As mentioned, Delgado had himself quite the day. His 15 points and game-high 18 rebounds resulted in his 59th career-double double. Khadeen Carrington also had 15 points, Powell had 13 points in the first half before getting ejected, and Desi Rodriguez finished with 13 as well. The Pirates also out-rebounded the Jaspers by a wide margin with 41 total rebounds to 26 from Manhattan.

This game was also rather sloppy with both teams contributing quite a number of turnovers with Manhattan turning over the ball 21 times and Seton Hall contributing 19 turnovers to the affair.

On the Jasper side of things, Manhattan shot the ball at a rate of 43% from the floor, 45% from three point range, and 100% from the foul line. While the foul shooting mark is impressive, they only had seven attempts. Manhattan’s leading scorer was fellow fracas-attendee Zane Waterman. Waterman led all scorers with 18 points. Manhattan’s other main scoring option was Calvin Crawford with 10 points. On another note the Jaspers get a lot of production from their bench with 28 of their 62 points coming off of rotations from the bench, something that will come in handy in MAAC play which is coming up for them. By comparison, Seton Hall only managed eight points from the bench.

With nonconference play all wrapped up for the Pirates their attention now turns to the Big East and their first game against Creighton.