After Record-Setting Run With St. Peter’s, Shaheen Holloway Leaves for Seton Hall

Shaheen Holloway, who stepped into the nationwide highlight because the coach of the plucky St. Peter’s Peacocks throughout their deep run via this 12 months’s N.C.A.A. males’s basketball match, left the college on Wednesday to develop into the pinnacle coach at Seton Corridor.

The transfer had been anticipated ever since Kevin Willard departed Seton Corridor for Maryland two weeks in the past, with Willard overtly expressing hope that Holloway — his former assistant — would return to the college the place he starred 20 years in the past.

Holloway, 45, has been within the nationwide highlight over the past three weeks, starting when the Peacocks, enjoying with a confidence and a fearlessness atypical for a second-place workforce within the Metro Atlantic Athletic Convention, took down Kentucky within the match’s opening spherical.

It was not lengthy earlier than a workforce of under-recruited and neglected gamers from a tiny commuter college in Jersey Metropolis, N.J., grew to become a match darling by following that upset with others, first of Murray State after which of Purdue, earlier than being trounced, 69-49, within the East Regional closing on Sunday by North Carolina. The Peacocks grew to become the primary No. 15 seed to advance that far.

Holloway captured the essence of his underdog squad when he was requested after the Murray State victory the way it had held up in a rough-and-tumble sport. “I’ve acquired guys from New Jersey and New York Metropolis,” Holloway stated in his Queens accent. “You suppose we’re petrified of something?”

If the remainder of the nation was launched to Holloway this month, he was hardly a secret among the many Northeast school basketball teaching fraternity. After Iona beat St. Peter’s earlier this season to grab management of the convention race, its coach, the Corridor of Famer Rick Pitino, complimented Holloway, calling him a future star.

The Pirates are relying on it.

Seton Corridor was a middling program when Willard arrived in 2010, earlier than he progressively made the Pirates fixtures within the N.C.A.A. match. His greatest workforce might have been in 2019-20, when Seton Corridor shared the Huge East regular-season title with Villanova and Creighton and climbed to fifteenth within the closing Related Press Prime 25 rankings. However the pandemic reduce the season quick, and Willard leaves having gained just one match sport in his 12 seasons.

In his closing sport, amid hypothesis that he was departing, eighth-seeded Seton Corridor was routed by ninth-seeded Texas Christian within the opening spherical of the N.C.A.A. match, 69-42. Willard additionally pissed off the fan base along with his disinterest in enjoying the Pirates’ in-state rival Rutgers, a sequence that resumed through the 2021-22 season, with out his blessing.

Seton Corridor followers, although, might be getting one among their very own in Holloway.

A former highschool all-American who spurned Duke to remain house — he grew up in Queens earlier than shifting throughout the Hudson to attend the St. Patrick in Elizabeth, N.J. — Holloway had a profitable profession. He was inducted into Seton Corridor’s Corridor of Fame and stays the profession help chief. His final season was his greatest, when he delivered a game-winning layup on the buzzer to beat Oregon within the opening spherical of the 2000 N.C.A.A. match.

However his tenure with the Pirates additionally featured a merciless ending — he severely injured his ankle within the following sport.

When the Pirates misplaced the subsequent week to Oklahoma State, 68-66, in a regional semifinal, Holloway was on the bench in road garments. Seton Corridor hasn’t been again since.