Seton Hall Basketball: How memorable a 2020 Final Four would’ve been
Led by seniors Myles Powell, Romaro Gill, and Quincy McKnight, Seton Hall Basketball was in a position to make a run at the Final Four prior to the 2019-20 season coming to an unceremonious end. The Pirates could have had just their second trip to the final weekend and it would have been memorable.
The Seton Hall Pirates have 107 seasons to draw upon when determining the most memorable teams in program history. Therefore, a quantifier of the last 40 years was implemented when placing the 2019-20 edition of Seton Hall Basketball. So yes, the great teams of the early 1950s led by All-American Walter Dukes and coached by Frank Hill are not included in this exercise, but those teams will not be forgotten simply because they accomplished what they did prior to 1980.
The 2019-20 Pirates had an up and down season. Competing in the challenging Big East it was expected, and having the opportunity to win the Big East Regular Season Championship outright, is as impressive as it is disappointing that they only got a share. The first claim toward being the most memorable Seton Hall team in the last 40 years of the program is their 13-4 conference record, which is the second most victories ever for a Seton Hall team.
Along with being led by the program’s second-ever First Team All-American Myles Powell, the Pirates were able to achieve their fourth-highest Associated Press Poll ranking, during this time period, when they reached No.8 on March 2nd. These accolades are not enough to make them more memorable than the 1988-89 team who faced Michigan in the National Final (no spoiler), but it puts them in the conversation.
Regular fans at the Izod Center will remember the key wins Seton Hall piled up this season led by a trio of seniors in Myles Powell, Romaro Gill, and Quincy McKnight. With key wins over Oregon, Maryland, Villanova and Butler the Pirates ended the season as No.15 on the Associated Press Poll and in NET. Even after losing the last two games of Big East play to Villanova and Creighton, a decent showing in the Big East Tournament would have earned the Pirates a four seed come the tournament.
The opportunity to play in the final weekend would take a memorable effort from their All-American, similar to the one they got from Terry DeHere during the1991 tournament. DeHere’s performance of scoring 26,28,28 points respectively before losing to UNLV in the Elite 8 had fans believing in a Final Four appearance and has been memorable ever since.
The memorable 1999-00 team, which consisted of one future NBA selection in Samuel Dalembert, had two upset victories in the tournament as a #10 seed. The make-up of that team resembles this year. While overall this year’s team was stronger than the 1999-00 team, Myles Powell is the sole Pirate projected to be selected in the 2020 NBA Draft.
Next. 2020 mock NCAA Tournament Round of 64 picks. dark
After contributing an additional 21 victories to the program’s 1535 and having only the program’s second-ever First Team All-American, a Final Four run would have been just their second appearance ever and enough to make the 2019-20 season the 5th memorable in Seton Hall Basketball in the last 40 years.