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Recap: Seton Hall blows out Xavier at home, 85-59

Date: January 23, 2021

By: Joel Moran

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Before facing Xavier today, the Pirates were on a roll winning 4 of their last 5 games and it’s safe to say the hot streak is continuing. Seton Hall is now 8-3 with a dominant win over Xavier beating them by 26 points. The final score was 85-59. One of the main reasons Seton Hall was able to win by such a large margin was the continued hot stretch of Andra Espinoza-Hunter.

 

She finished the game with 28 points shooting 50% from the field and 44% from beyond the arc. Ever since her transfer waiver was cleared, she has been a huge addition to the Seton Hall Pirates. Rising sophomore Lauren Park-Lane was out for this matchup and with her being out someone had to take on a bigger role. Espinoza-Hunter did exactly that.

Other key contributors to the Pirates win were Alexia Allesch and Desiree Elmore. Allesch helped secure the glass for the Pirates as she finished the game with 10 rebounds and Elmore made sure to get all of her teammates involved as she finished the game with six assists. Elmore was also tremendous defensively. She took a plethora of charges against Xavier to the point that you could feel Xavier players second guessing driving into the lane if Elmore was there.

 

While Elmore was the star defensively for the Pirates, the team as a whole played sound and disciplined defense. They were on time on closeouts and contested well which made it seem like the Xavier offense at times felt suffocated. It showed in the stats as well. Xavier shot 27% from the field and 26% from 3. Those numbers look bad on the surface, but a number that is worse is the 28 turnovers they accumulated throughout the game.

 

After a 20-day hiatus we knew they weren’t going to be as prepared as Seton Hall, but credit to Seton Hall for staying ready and not taking their opponent lightly. All in all, this was a team with an outstanding team effort. But if I’d have to pick the main stars of this game, I’d have to go with the trio of Espinoza-Hunter, Allesch, and Elmore. They were all main contributors in helping the Pirates secure their fifth win in their last six games.

The Pirates will be back in action on Wednesday, Jan. 27 when they head to Milwaukee to face off against the Marquette Golden Eagles at 2:00 p.m. This is the second time that Seton Hall will playing Marquette this season. The Pirates got the 77-66 where they were anchored once again by Espinoza-Hunter and Elmore. The Hall will also hope that Park-Lane can return for next game as she has been greatly missed these past two games and will be needed in against a talented Marquette team. 89.5 FM WSOU will have all the coverage of that one from Milwaukee.

Joel Moran can be reached at joel.moran@student.shu.edu.

Posted in: Sports, Women's Basketball

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