Bracketology 2022: Marquette, Seton Hall, BYU among early big winners
By Joey Loose
Seton Hall
We’ve already gushed over Marquette, and it’s great what not only the Golden Eagles but the Big East as a whole has done early this season. They had a fantastic showing against the Big Ten in the Gavitt Tip-off Games, though it wasn’t Marquette who had the most impressive victory of the bunch. It’s impressive to knock off a top 10 team at home, but Seton Hall did even better: knocking off a top 5 team on the road, securing the best road win of the early season.
On Sunday, Seton Hall was already turning heads with a dominant 80-44 victory over Yale, a second straight game in which their defense was suffocating. But the true highlight of the week came Tuesday in Ann Arbor, as the Pirates secured a 67-65 upset win over #4 Michigan, getting 16 points from Jared Rhoden and 13-point efforts off the bench from Tray Jackson and Bryce Aiken. The Pirates did everything they needed to do to pull off the upset, even if their offense wasn’t dynamic or outstanding; defense led the way again.
Seton Hall is already up to 16th in defensive efficiency and they might be even better than that at this point. This 3-0 start is great, but a tough battle with Ohio State looms to begin next week. It’s far too early for the Pirates to celebrate, with a few other tricky games before Big East play begins. Regardless, they are one of the biggest winners of the early season and have proven they might just belong among the top teams in the country again. It takes a special night from a special team to pull an upset like that and this can really kickstart things for the Pirates.