The Seton Hall Pirates came within one overtime of a national championship, and South Orange has been measuring everything against that night ever since. In 1989, P.J. Carlesimo's Pirates — Australian sharpshooter Andrew Gaze, Gerald Greene, Ramon Ramos and company — stormed through March to the title game in Seattle, where they fell to Michigan 80-79 in overtime after Rumeal Robinson's free throws with three seconds left. A late foul call on Darryl Walker remains one of the most debated whistles in tournament history. It is still the only Final Four in school history, and the heartbreak of that finish is the program's founding myth: the Hall was this close, and it has been chasing that closeness ever since.
The Pirates didn't fade into a one-hit wonder. The 1991 team reached the Elite Eight, proving 1989 was a program, not a moment. Through the 1990s and 2000s, Seton Hall stayed a Big East fixture — the 2000 squad, anchored by Samuel Dalembert, made the Sweet 16, and the Pirates have spent generations producing pros and March moments with metronomic regularity. Seton Hall's identity was forged in the league's golden age: tough, physical, unafraid. In a conference built on rock fights, the Hall was the team nobody wanted to see in March — defensive, deep, clutch, and mean in the way only Big East basketball could be.
That identity is exactly what head coach Shaheen Holloway has been selling since he arrived — and 2026-27 is the most fascinating version of it yet. Last season the Pirates were the feel-good story of the league, shocking expectations and playing their way to the very edge of an NCAA tournament bid. Then the portal took nearly everything: fourteen of fifteen players from that roster departed, including defensive menace Budd Clark and big man Njai Hines (off to UConn). Holloway — a Jersey City kid who won a national title as a player at Villanova — stayed through it all, and he has rebuilt the Pirates almost from scratch through the transfer portal. This season is a referendum on coaching: can one coach's system carry a roster of strangers back to the bubble?
The portal class is the strongest of the Holloway era, and it's pointed at one glaring weakness. Last season Seton Hall shot 30.5 percent from three — 334th nationally — and Holloway promised to fix it. Enter Dartmouth's Kareem Thomas (.447 from downtown), Loyola Marymount's Rodney Brown Jr. (14 points a game, 38 percent on threes) and Bowling Green's Mayar Wol (.391) — the first time the Hall has ever brought in two shooters of this caliber in one class. The headline guard is Del Jones, a 6-foot-3 junior from Radford who poured in 17 a game in the Big South, and there's Big East blood in the mix too: Simeon Wilcher, the 6-foot-4 wing who played for Rick Pitino at St. John's before a season at Texas, and Xavier grad transfer Roddie Anderson III, a proven double-digit scorer at this level.
Up front, the plan is improvisation and muscle. Terry Copeland Jr., a 6-foot-9 junior-college product from Orange, New Jersey, is expected to start at center, and 6-foot-10 Florida Atlantic transfer Devin Williams — 2.6 blocks and 171 rebounds last season — has impressed as a force in summer workouts, possibly sliding to the four while Holloway hunts two European power forwards. Illinois transfer Mihailo Petrović's status is pending a visa resolution, and fifth-year man Elijah Fisher may return if the NCAA's eligibility lawsuits break his way. The defense will play hard — it always does under Holloway, whose teams have owned the Big East's best turnover margin. The question, as ever under this coach, is whether the offense can keep up: Seton Hall's effective field goal percentage has ranked dead last in the league under Holloway, and the pieces are new everywhere.
The home of it all is the Prudential Center in Newark, a big-league stage that has hosted some of the loudest nights in recent Big East memory. And the program's blood feud remains the Garden State Hardwood Classic against Rutgers, the winter war that splits New Jersey in two. In the Big East's nightly wars — Villanova, UConn, Marquette, St. John's, Creighton — the Pirates play the same role they always have: the tough, physical spoiler that makes giants earn everything.
What defines Seton Hall in 2026-27 is the experiment itself. No program in the country turns over its roster like this and survives; Holloway has already done it once and nearly danced. The point-guard battle — Jones, returning backup Trey Parker, Petrović — will decide the ceiling, and the shooting imports have to translate their numbers up a level. Preseason previews have the Hall slotted as a bubble hopeful, the classic eighth-place-with-upside Big East team. If the defense connects like last year and two of the three snipers hit, South Orange gets another March worth remembering. If not, it's another year of measuring everything against 1989 — the overtime, the heartbreak, and the one weekend the Pirates were the best story in America.
