College Basketball

Seton Hall no match for Marquette

The Pirates can’t pretend any longer. The bubble is burst.

Seton Hall’s faint hopes of reaching the NCAA Tournament — for the first time since 2006 — as an at-large team all but collapsed on Tuesday night in a loss to Marquette, 77-66, at the Prudential Center, where the Pirates fell to 1-4 at home in Big East play.

With a win, Seton Hall (13-11, 4-7) would have moved into a three-way tie for sixth-place in the conference — with St. John’s (15-9, 5-6) and Marquette (14-10, 6-5) — but the Pirates, who haven’t won consecutive games since late December and are in the midst of a three-game homestand, now enter Thursday’s rivalry game against the Red Storm as little more than a potential spoiler hoping to slow surging St. John’s.

“It’s disappointing on many levels,” said Seton Hall coach Kevin Willard. “We finally come home and have three in a row … to be able to come home and have a chance, but this group hasn’t seized the opportunities they’ve had and I don’t think they’ve understood their opportunities.

“I think I’ve got to start looking at different options and seeing what I got.”

Behind Brian Oliver’s team-high 15 points on five 3-pointers, Seton Hall rebounded from an early 12-point deficit to take a six-point lead in the final 10 minutes, but the Golden Eagles demonstrated more energy and enthusiasm than the Pirates and a mostly empty arena combined, going on an 11-0 run before running away with the game, led by Jamil Wilson’s career-high 25 points and 10 rebounds.

Though Seton Hall shot over 53 percent from the field and hit 10 of 21 on 3-pointers, Marquette held a 32-19 advantage on the glass, including nine offensive rebounds in the second half, while getting to the foul line (30 of 34) with unending ease.

“I wouldn’t necessarily say that we’re more talented than Seton Hall … but I thought our culture and the toughness of our culture is why we won,” Marquette coach Buzz Williams said. “As I told our team, ‘All this does is allow us to live to fight another day.’”

Seton Hall looked ready to wave a white flag after falling behind 16-6, with Wilson surpassing his season’s scoring average within the game’s first six minutes by hitting 4 of 4 3-pointers for 14 points, but the Pirates closed the half on a 19-8 run, trailing 34-33, despite having shot 60 percent from the field.

Seton Hall’s sophomore point guard Sterling Gibbs — who finished with 12 points, six assists and three steals — said he realizes the team is playing with more energy on the road, but he, like his teammates and coach, can’t figure out why.

Gibbs referenced the Big East Tournament, the last lifeboat before all hope eventually sinks, but even he couldn’t help but acknowledge how much different the season would look like if the senior-laden team didn’t falter in the final minutes.

“The ball is in our hands, the game’s ours to lose,” Gibbs said. “This was a big opportunity for us. We could’ve gone to 5-6 here, and then hopefully got a win against St. John’s, 6-6, and then we’re right back in it.”

And just like that, they’re not.