Seton Hall
We're Talking about Practice
Date: March 7, 2015By George Balekji
Quest Multisport's facilities are accustomed to its use as the site for the NBA rookie combine, however, this afternoon it was filled with blue and white as the Seton Hall Women's basketball team ran back and forth on the hardwood floors in outer Chicago practicing for their first matchup in the BIG EAST tournament.
What made this session unique is that the Pirates were not accustomed to having the delayed wait until Sunday to get their initial dosage of action, as they hold the number one seed, which comes with a first-round bye, for the first time in program history.
Head Coach Tony Bozzella addressed after practice that having the extra day off did not change much about his team's preparation, "We're going to try and treat it like every game. I just think it's important that we do what we got 26 wins doing; we're not going to reinvent the wheel".
To take a step back from his own team, the BIG EAST coach of the year looked ahead to the opponent the Pirates will face. The eight-seeded Marquette Golden Eagles handed them their last loss with a final score of 73-70, in Milwaukee on February 15th. The biggest test for the Hall will be the dominant duo in the paint, Arlesia Morse and Apiew Ojulu of Marquette who average a combined 12 rebounds per-game. Look back at Seton Hall's last showdown with the Golden Eagles, the apparent difference between the two teams was on the glass. Marquette defended their home court verse the Pirates by pulling down 53 boards to the Hall's 44. That advantage in favor of the Blue and Gold lead to 17 second-chance points for Marquette and just 13 for Seton Hall. To avoid this once again, Coach Bozzella had a simple solution, it was to turn towards his players' hearts and their desire to get the ball, but also to look past his bigs, "We need our guards to rebound the ball too, we can't just rely on our post players".
That statement seems to lean towards Tabatha Richardson-Smith, whose biggest improvement over the course of this season has been her approach to attacking the glass. The most explosive offensive player that makes up the all-conference trio in the backcourt for the Pirates does more than match her 17.8 PPG average. Averaging seven rebounds per game, she has exploded for 6 double-doubles this season and averaged 24.5 PPG in her final weekend of BIG EAST action. One thing that did not sit well with the Junior from Bay City Texas was that she was named 2nd team all-conference and it was showing in practice this week, "She's had her best week of practice all year" Coach Bozzella began, "She could've sulked and moped… she chose to go out there and play her rear end off in practice, and I think she is going to have a huge BIG EAST weekend, huge".
The Pirates tipoff off for their first game of the tournament at 12PM on Sunday, March 8th and all coverage begins on WSOU at 11:45.
Posted in: Sports
