Seton Hall will aim for its second 3-0 start during the Shaheen Holloway era when it hosts Fairfield on Monday night in South Orange, N.J.
Seton Hall moved to 2-0 Friday with a narrow 68-61 victory over visiting Wagner.
Elijah Fisher led the Pirates with 21 points along with six rebounds. Tajuan Simpkins scored 15 points off the bench. Stephon Payne was particularly instrumental in the second half, finishing with seven points, 10 rebounds, five blocks and two steals.
Yet, Wagner hung around until late in large part because of its long-distance shooting. The Seahawks made 12 of their 25 3-point attempts. For large stretches, Wagner appeared to be the more motivated team.
Holloway was extremely displeased with Seton Hall’s showing despite the victory.
“Immature. We’ve got a lot of growing up to do. I feel like we lost to tell you the truth,” Holloway said. “I’m not happy with the performance. But you know, we found a way to win, and that’s what good teams do.”
However, Holloway insists that the Pirates will put forth a better effort against Fairfield.
“Hopefully, we cut that out of our system because you’re always gonna have a game like that early,” Holloway said. “We won’t play like this on Monday.”
Meanwhile, Fairfield is coming off a 74-53 victory at NJIT for its first win of the season. Declan Wucherpfennig and Braden Sparks each had 14 points for the Stags.
Fairfield (1-1) flashed its potential during a 76-68 loss at Penn State in its season opener. Stags head coach Chris Casey was proud of his team for building on that and doing the little things to secure a road victory.
“To win on the road in college basketball, you need to have toughness, you need to rebound and you need to defend,” Casey said. “I thought we did all of those things well (Saturday).”
The aggressive Stags were relentless on the offensive glass and tallied 18 second-chance points in the NJIT win. Fairfield’s 54 total rebounds were the program’s most against a Division I opponent since amassing that exact total vs. American on Nov. 10, 2006.
