After miraculous Elite 8 run with St. Peter’s, Shaheen Holloway ready for next step as Seton Hall head coach

In the leadup to the UConn men’s basketball season, Courant beat writer Joe Arruda will be profiling each of the four new coaches in the Big East Conference this season. Today: Seton Hall’s Shaheen Holloway.

While UConn was losing to New Mexico State in the first round of the 2022 NCAA Tournament in Buffalo, the attention of college basketball fans across the nation was directed toward Indianapolis, where Shaheen Holloway and mid-major Saint Peter’s were hanging with No. 2 seed Kentucky.

By the time the buzzer sounded on UConn’s season, taken out at the hands of Teddy Allen and the 12th-seeded Aggies, Kentucky led Saint Peter’s 68-62 with 3:26 to go. Holloway’s Peacocks eventually forced overtime and stunned the nation, beating the blue-blood Wildcats and beginning a viral Cinderella run.

It took Dan Hurley a bit of time to get over the Huskies’ loss, but eventually the Peacocks’ run grabbed his attention as well.

Holloway, who was hired as Seton Hall’s newest head coach shortly after Saint Peter’s was ousted by North Carolina in the Elite Eight, grew up in Queens. Three years younger than Hurley, the pair have known each other almost all of their lives. Holloway played high school hoops at St. Patrick in Elizabeth, New Jersey – a rival of fellow Northeast basketball powerhouse St. Anthony’s, where Dan Hurley played for his Hall of Fame father, Bob Hurley Sr.

After Hurley’s playing career at Seton Hall came to an end following the 1995-96 season, Holloway came in and succeeded him as the Pirates’ point guard.

“He was much more successful as a point guard there than I was,” Hurley admitted at Big East media day.

Unlike most of the rest of the nation, Hurley had followed Saint Peter’s throughout the regular season. Calling Holloway a friend and a person he cares about, Hurley watched as the Peacocks improved from the regular season to the MAAC tournament, where they got past Fairfield and Quinnipiac before beating Monmouth for the March Madness bid.

“And I got caught up in their run,” Hurley said. “Not as much as maybe I would’ve if we didn’t lose in the way we lost. It put a pretty good damper on any game I watched for four, six, eight, 12 weeks after we lost.”

“Dreams do come true”

At Holloway’s introductory press conference on March 31, 2022, when Seton Hall athletic director Bryan Felt introduced him as the next Pirates head coach, it sparked a standing ovation from the hundreds in attendance – including players from his Saint Peter’s team four days after their unlikely run ended.

Holloway sat, masked in his chair and shook his head with emotion. He leaned back with a deep breath, soaking the special moment in, one he’ll never forget. Nas’ song “The World is Yours” played in the background behind a roaring applause.

He was presented with a Seton Hall jersey, the No. 10 that he wore as a student-athlete in the program.

“I’m not sure who picked that music but that’s big time, right?” he opened, his voice still not quite recovered from the Elite Eight run. “Dreams do come true.”

That’s what it was about. A dream and a legacy that the 46-year-old sees in his future.

Coaching at a mid-major was a step – which he climbed to get onto the national stage, to expose the world to his “old school values,” as Hurley calls it.

After seven years bouncing around international and semi-pro basketball as a player, Holloway was an assistant at Iona under Kevin Willard, who he followed back to Seton Hall and continued as an assistant from 2010-18. Holloway was hired at Saint Peter’s ahead of the 2018-19 season, leading the Peacocks to a 64-57 record over four seasons that included a MAAC coach of the year award in 2020.

“In life it’s about building, right? Each year we want to get better and better as a coach, as a player, and for me, I want to do the same thing,” he told The Courant. “Last year was great, but last year is over. This year it’s time for me to build here and get my legacy started here.”

Holloway was quick to acknowledge the 15 Saint Peter’s players in attendance at Seton Hall. He said he met with them for three hours while he shared the news he’d be leaving.

“Those young men understood why I was making the decision,” he said, choked up at the podium, “and it was so easy because those guys changed my life.”

Seton Hall already knew him, but the run was what sealed his elevation to this new position. His ability as a coach, leading a group of players no one expected to go toe-to-toe with some of the highest-rated prospects in the nation – taking down perennial powers Kentucky and Purdue, eventually losing to the tournament’s runner-up in North Carolina, was on display in one of the country’s most-watched sporting events.

“I just have a lot of respect for his career,” Hurley said. “I mean, he starts out his career as an assistant coach at a public high school, Bloomfield Tech, and just has worked his tail off and had to earn every opportunity in coaching to the point where now he’s the head coach of his alma mater in the Big East.”

“I’m hungry now”

Holloway wasn’t the only Peacock advancing to a higher level. Eight different players from the Elite 8 roster entered the transfer portal soon after learning Holloway would no longer be their coach. KC Ndefo, however, tagged along with Holloway to Seton Hall.

Ndefo, a 6-foot-7, played four seasons at Saint Peter’s and made a name for himself during the tournament, including posting10 points, seven rebounds, three assists, three steals and six blocks in the Elite Eight loss to North Carolina.

The Pirates earned an at-large bid into the NCAA tournament as a No. 8 seed last year with a 21-11 record, 11-8 in the Big East but, like UConn, didn’t make it past the first round.

Holloway received commitments from five other players in the transfer portal: Tray Jackson (Missouri), Al-Amir Dawes (Clemson), Dre Davis (Louisville), Femi Odukale (Pittsburgh) and Abdou Ndiaye (Illinois State). The Pirates also added a trio of three-star true freshmen: Jaquan Sanders, Tae Davis and Jaquan Harris. The roster has six guards, six forwards and one combo – just the way Holloway likes it.

“When you get the opportunity to play in the NCAA Tournament and make the run that we made into the Elite Eight, to me, I’m hungry now,” he said. “Now I want the Final Four, I want the national championship. That’s the goal. The goal is to keep building.”

Seton Hall, led by point guard Kadary Richmond, who transferred from Syracuse before last season, was seventh in the Big East preseason coaches’ poll. Richmond, who averaged 8.8 points, 4.1 assists, 3.6 rebounds and 1.7 steals in 25.9 minutes per game last season, was an all-Big East second-team pick.

Seton Hall hosts St. Peter’s at noon on Nov. 12 at the Prudential Center – a game with less significance because of the changeover, but a meaningful one nonetheless.

With a new beginning at a place with loads of personal history, Holloway hopes to work the same magic 30 minutes west.

“I love his old school values as a coach,” Hurley said. “He’s got an incredibly high standard. I coach the same way. I think we mirror a lot of the way we go about our job. We’re old school, we set high standards for how we’re going to practice and how our guys are going to carry themselves on and off the court. We’re not the easiest people to play for, but I think we make our players better and we build character and we win a lot of games.”