Seton Hall stays hot in defeat of DePaul

It may not have come particularly easy, but the Seton Hall Pirates came up victorious Wednesday night. The Hall scored their 10th win in a row, defeating the DePaul Blue Demons 64-57 in Newark. The victory was the Pirates’ eighth in Big East play, as they’re a perfect 8-0 at the top of the Big East Conference at the moment.

Scoring was particularly hard to come by in the beginning of the game for both teams. The score was just 29-28 heading into the break, as neither team could particularly get it going. Seton Hall was pretty cold themselves, as they went through many a spurt where they couldn’t answer what DePaul was dishing out. The Blue Demons had went on a 7-0 run towards the end of the half to take the lead, and a jumper by Anthony Nelson thinned the margin from three points to one at the end of the first 20 minutes of action.

The second half started out poorly for The Hall as it was more of the same. DePaul went on a run thanks to Jaylen Butz, Charlie Moore, Jalen Coleman-Lands and Paul Reed to jump out to a 41-32 lead. The nine-point margin was the largest of the game for the Blue Demons, and things seemed to be going very well for them. But The Hall would finally turn things around. Jared Rhoden hit two straight layups and Myles Powell would knock down two free throws to bring the deficit down to three. Quincy McKnight’s layup brought it to a one-point game, but Darious Hall would answer with a layup and a dunk to make it 45-40.

Rhoden would score the next six points for the Pirates, but still, DePaul held serve. Trailing 51-49 after a free throw from Moore, Powell would then take over. Seton Hall’s star scored the next nine points in a row for his team and brought them out in front by seven points. That would prove to be the backbreaker for the Blue Demons, as they could only get to within five the rest of the way.

Powell may have shot 33 percent from the field and 20 percent from long range, but he was no doubt integral in the team’s victory. He led with 24 points and was followed up by Rhoden, who scored 14 with 11 rebounds for a double-double. McKnight had nine points, falling just shy of a double figure performance. On the DePaul side, Coleman-Lands and Moore hit double figures with 10 and 14 respectively. Hall scored nine points, while Butz and Romeo Weems each had eight.

Seton Hall will look to move to 9-0 in Big East play on Saturday when they face the Xavier Musketeers. DePaul, meanwhile, will hope to get their second Big East win of the year when they travel to Milwaukee to face the Marquette Golden Eagles.