Bracketology 2021: Western Kentucky, Seton Hall among week’s biggest losers
Seton Hall Pirates
Kevin Willard’s team has had three opportunities to get signature victories already this season. The Pirates have squandered each of them, with two of those losses being this past week against Oregon and Rhode Island. Both losses were also double-digit setbacks, not a great look for the “eye test” either.
Sandro Mamukelashvili (18.8 Pts, 8.3 Reb, 2.5 Ast) has done a formidable job replacing Myles Powell as the go to scorer, but the bigger issue has been replacing the defensive presence of Romaro Gill. Seton Hall is giving up 72 points an outing and ranks 240th in defensive rating through four games.
Again, this team is not done, but there is good news and bad news here.
Let’s start with the good news. Big East play gets going here soon and will give the Pirates plenty of opportunities at quad one and quad two wins. There is definitely a chance that this team finds itself coming off of the loss of two of its biggest pieces a season ago, Powell and Gill.
The bad news is it’s not the offense that is missing, it’s the defense and that is something harder to fix. The Big East gauntlet they will face won’t make it easy, and if Willard can’t get this team to buy in on that end of the floor they are going to be in a lot of trouble.
Nonetheless, Seton Hall’s 1-3 start and losses this week to Oregon (who also lost to a so-so Missouri team) and URI make them unquestionably one of the biggest Bracketology losers in college basketball in week #2.