Seton Hall and Washington State experienced massively frustrating losses in their semifinal games after successful openers in the Maui Invitational in Lahaina, Hawaii.
Both teams are hoping to avoid more angst and a second loss when the Pirates face the Cougars in the third-place game on Wednesday.
After going 7-25 last season, Seton Hall won its first six games, including an 85-74 victory over No. 23 North Carolina State in its opening-round game Monday. Beating the only ranked team in the field set up an encounter with Southern California, which the Pirates lost 83-81 on Tuesday.
Seton Hall held a 13-point lead in the first half and overcame an eight-point deficit in the final 4:10. The Pirates tied the game on a jumper by AJ Staton-McCray with 1:02 left and trailed by one with six seconds left, but could never regain the lead and were left frustrated with a 38-18 disparity in free-throw attempts along with a 28-19 foul disparity.
“Tough, tough way to lose,” Pirates coach Shaheen Holloway said on a postgame radio interview after his team shot 56.1%
“Guys played hard, that’s all you can ask for, gave ourselves a chance. Got to learn from it.”
The Pirates are getting strong performances from Staton-McCray, who followed up his 22-point showing in the opener with 17 points Tuesday. Adam Clark led Seton Hall with 18 points but the Pirates were outrebounded 35-21 and could not fully capitalize on 16 USC turnovers.
Washington State (3-4) opened the tournament with Monday’s 90-85 win over Chaminade when Ace Glass III scored 26 off the bench. Glass started for the first time Tuesday and scored a freshman-program-record 40 points but the Cougars were dealt a 100-94 loss to Arizona State, which they allowed to shoot 58.9% from the field.
Washington State also squandered a double-digit lead as it led by 12 early in the second half and missed 14 of its final 20 shots.
“I thought we definitely made improvements,” Washington State coach David Riley said. “Our guys showed great spirit for 40 minutes and were competitive and played a little looser than we had. The mistakes we made were aggressive. The reality is you can’t give up 100 points and win too many ballgames, and we got to figure that side out a little bit more.”
–Field Level Media
