Seton Hall women’s basketball is on the NCAA Tournament bubble

• The Seton Hall women’s basketball team is hoping to make the NCAA Tournament after the men’s team was snubbed last year.
• The Pirates finished 21-8 overall and 13-5 in the Big East, good for third place in the conference.
• Head coach Tony Bozzella believes the Big East deserves three teams in the tournament and that his team is capable of winning a national championship.

One year after the Seton Hall men’s basketball team got snubbed by the NCAA Tournament selection committee, the Pirates’ women’s hoops team is trying to avoid the same fate.

Head coach Tony Bozzella is doing everything in his power to trumpet the virtues of his team’s resume: a 21-8 record – including 13-5 in the Big East – a third-place finish in the nation’s fifth-ranked conference, and zero bad losses.

At the moment bracketologists peg the Big East as a two-bid league, with powerhouse UConn and 23^rd-ranked Creighton in the field. Incredibly, the Ivy League may qualify three teams including Princeton, which beat the Hall 78-75 in South Orange in November.

“At the end of the day, our league has to be worth something,” Bozzella said.

It’s eerily similar to the men’s situation last year, when Seton Hall finished fourth in the Big East with 20 wins overall a 13-7 record, only to see the committee take just three programs from their league – a historic snub.

“Last year in the men’s tournament they only took three Big East teams and one of them won the national championship; clearly, there were teams that didn’t get it that deserved to,” Bozzella said. “This year, I strongly believe we have the team that is going to win the national championship. So look at what you did last year – the Big East should have had a fourth team in, and this year we should have a third team in.”

The Pirates have one final chance to make their case – in the Big East Tournament. They open Saturday against either DePaul or Xavier in the quarterfinals at Mohegan Sun Arena in Connecticut. A win there won’t be enough.

“I will be blunt,” Bozzella said. “We’re going to need to play Creighton in the semifinals – if they lose before then, that’s not going to help us – and we need to win that game.”

Creighton swept the Pirates by scores of 72-64 and 72-56 in the regular season.

If the Hall can turn the tables, then they should be ahead of Marquette in the at-large pecking order – despite ranking nine places behind the Golden Eagles in the NET ranking. Last year, on the men’s side, the selection committee had Seton Hall closer to the cut line than fellow bubble squad St. John’s (which owned a much better NET) by virtue of the Pirates’ higher finish in the standings.

When neither Seton Hall nor St. John’s made it, there was backlash against the Big East leadership for not pushing their case hard enough – the way top officials in some other leagues are constantly stumping for their teams. Bozzella would like to see a more proactive approach heading into the draw.

“I don’t think they’re doing enough to get us, Marquette and Villanova out there,” he said. “I don’t think they did enough on the men’s side last year.”

His Pirates would be fun to watch on a big stage. They feature three stars in postgrad forward and Manasquan High School grad Faith Masonius (15.4 ppg, 5.2 rpg, 3.0 apg), sophomore guard Savannah Catalon (14.2 ppg), who missed nine games with an injury, and fab freshman Jada Eads (14.1 ppg).

Picked to finish seventh in the Big East’s preseason coaches’ poll, this squad posted the second-most Big East triumphs in Bozzella’s 12 seasons at the helm.

“It’s been my most enjoyable year not because of 21 wins, but because we have really good people,” he said. “In the last year I lost my mom, I lost my aunt, I’ve been in the hospital twice. It’s been physically and mentally a hard year for me, and these kids and our staff have caried me through.”

Jerry Carino has covered the New Jersey sports scene since 1996 and the college basketball beat since 2003. Contact him at jcarino@gannettnj.com.

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