Team: Seton Hall Pirates
2025-26 Record: 21-12, 10-10 Great Eastern
2025-26 Great East End: Fourth, five games behind Villanova, one game ahead of Creighton
Final 2025-26 Computer Rankings
NET: #53
KenPom.com: #51
BartTorvik.com: #56
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Postseason: The Pirates advanced to the Big East semifinals with a win over Creighton, but had their season ended by St. John’s, 78-68. After being left out of the NCAA tournament — at #53 in the net with a 1-6 record in Quadrant 1, it wasn’t a huge surprise — Seton Hall released this statement:
Our basketball program gave it their all in what was a successful season that included 21 victories, their ninth top-five finish in the Big East over the last 11 seasons and the nation’s second most wins since last season. After not receiving the NCAA Tournament, our student-athletes and coaches, along with the administration, have decided to decline this year’s NCAA postseason tournament invitations and turn their focus to the 2026-27 season. Congratulations to Coach Holloway and his team on a tremendous season, and we thank the Seton Hall fans for their support all season. Our university is committed to building on this year’s success as we prepare for the future.
We would like to point out specifically that the party has turned its focus to the 2026-27 season. Did you get it? Okay, next section.
Notable Departures: There are eight guys who have retired from the Pirates for their next role. Top four scorers? He went away. Top four rebounds? He went away. The only guy who averaged more than 1.5 assists per game? He went away. All four guys who averaged at least one steal per game? He went away. So guys who averaged more than a log per game? He went, and Najai Hineswho led the entire Big East in blocks per game despite not starting and averaging 18 minutes a night, specifically went to UConn.
Three of the four guys who started all 33 games. Five of the six guys who played in all 33 games are gone.
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Some of these guys lead like a rebounder Stephen the PaganThey withdrew because of their eligibility anyway and what else are they going to do? Some of these guys are like a leading scorer Budd ClarkThey gave up eligibility and got outta town like they did with Clark up to Ole Miss.
Notable returns: Two players are returning from last season. He is one Elias Fisher who started all 33 games and averaged about 21 minutes per night. He averaged 6.6 points and 2.9 rebounds, but his outside threat shooting was just 23.7%. It is different Trey Parkerwho is not at all a co-operator of the Southern Garden. This Trey Parker played in 32 of 33 games – during the visit to UConn lost – in all coming off the bench, and added 4.3 points and 2.8 rebounds a night. He is a worse shooter than Fisher, hitting just 20.5% of his 1.4 field goal attempts per game.
That’s it. Literally returning the full list of pirates. No guys who were redshirting, no guys who played 4 minutes a game in 7 appearances, no additions, nothing. He is a fisherman and a parker.
Key Additions: Three rookies are listed on the list, with only one of them listed in 247 games. It’s probably more about the other two international standards than anything else, but we can still only go forward here.
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This gives the Pirates 10 transfers, one of the junior college ranks of nine from other Division 1 programs. There are two notable name recognition programs out of nine Division 1 guys Roddie Anderson (6’3″, 195 lb. fifth-year guard, Orange County, California) and Simeon Wilcher (6’4″, 200 lb. senior guard, Plainfield, New Jersey) Anderson was at Xavier last season, hanging around after the coaching change most likely because of the permanent damage to the season more than anything else that’s here now. 10.9 points, 3.3 rebounds, and 2.2 assists per game, usually transferred to his bench. For whatever reason, he didn’t want to hang with Rick Pitino anymore, so he went to Texas for the season 2025-26 projected.
Some of the other seven transfers have had interesting seasons in the past, implying that they could do something with the Pirates this year. Rodney Brown (6’6″, 195 lb. senior guard, Perris, California) averaged 14.0 points per game last season for Loyola Marymount while shooting 38% from three. Del Jones (6’3″ 187 lb. junior guard from Landover, Maryland) was a 17 point scorer for Radford last year, starting in all 32 of his appearances and playing more than 31 minutes a night. Kareem Thomas (6’5″, 195 lb. junior guard, Wilmington, Delaware) averaged 16 points per game as a sophomore last season and made nearly 45% of his 4.0 three-point attempts per game, but was it worth leaving Dartmouth for Seton Hall? Devin Williams (6’10”, 205 lb. junior forward, Riverside, California) led the entire American Conference in blocks per game for FAU last year with 2.6, and also added 7.5 points and 5.2 rebounds. Mayar Wol (6’8″, 196 lb. senior forward, Raleigh, North Carolina) was a part-time starter and 20-minute game guy for Bowling Green last season, finishing with an average of 10.5 points per game.
Some: Shaheen Holloway is entering her fifth season at Seton Hall and ninth season as a Division 1 head coach. The overall record is 134-122 and 70-65 with the Pirates.
Outlook: Last year, Seton Hall had 10 new transfers coming into the season where they went 7-25, and put a really miserable basketball team at the end of the floor. That’s KenPom.com’s worst defensive ranking since head coach Shaheeen Holloway returned for his first season at St. Peter’s in 2019, so the Pirates were the worst major league team in the country in 2024-25. It wasn’t bad that SHU was doing the number because of this hard reset, but the question remained whether the reset would work or not.
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This work, most tellingly, guided the Holloway Pirates to a record third win in four years in South Orange and the 21st winning season again in three seasons. How to pull it off? Seton Hall was one of the 20 most effective defenses in the country last year according to KenPom.com, and at that point, a mediocre offense for an atrocious offense gets you to the final playoffs of the NCAA tournament.
But now Holloway is once again replacing his face. He has two rotation guys who were really worth nothing in return, which probably means the Pirates will find themselves burdened with carrying pieces in their stack of 10 transfers and three rookies. Holloway can clearly coach the defense, even though their defense slipped, 90 was still the best in the country. Their problem in 2024-25 is that the Pirates had the second-worst defense in Big East league history. If Holloway can figure out how to get this collection of guys to play where he got a completely different collection of guys to play last year, Seton Hall is probably going to be the least bit tough this season.
Here’s a question for you, though: What if Seton Hall was just 19-14 last season and 8-12 in Big East play? If so, do we think of pirates differently? Nothing else changes, just flipping the two results. I’m asking this because Marquette is completely throwing the end of two games against Seton Hall last season. At home in December, Marquette trailed 73-66 with three minutes left and went on a 13-0 run to lose six. The Golden Eagles were up eight at the half on visiting Rock, then went on a 12-2 run, and then couldn’t get out of a 64-64 tie with two minutes left. Now, I’m not going to say that Marquette’s team should have won those games last year. Last year’s MU team was apparently cosmically able to close out the competition in some similar competent fashion, so it’s no surprise that they had two more disasters on the pile.
But I’d say all the signs at Marquette are better than last season. What if it flips two games by itself? What if Creighton is better than last year and the Pirates don’t squeak past the Bluejays by two points at home? What if Georgetown figures out how to score 52 points in a Rock game? Yes, Seton Hall has won 10 games to play in the Big East, and all credit goes to Holloway for what to do. He also squeezed his way into a few wins there, and if the level of competition in the league boosts a bit this year — seven teams finished the year between #67 and #99 above at KenPom — then we have to wonder if Shaheen Holloway’s magic skills are going to work again.
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