The BIG EAST held its annual Men’s Basketball Awards Press Conference at Madison Square Garden (MSG) on Wednesday afternoon, where Seton Hall men’s basketball head coach Shaheen Holloway was presented with the award for being named the unanimous 2025-26 BIG EAST Coach of the Year.
Holloway has never been one to make individual awards, although individual, about himself—and taking the podium to receive his award after BIG EAST Freshman Player of the Year, Marquette’s Nigel James Jr., the 2000 SHU graduate said that this one's for Pirate Nation, who have stuck with him through thick and thin.
“This award is not really an award for me—it’s an award for the whole Seton Hall community,” Holloway said.
“You know, obviously, after last year, a tough season, this year, the coaching staff, the managers, the training staff, and obviously the players, spent so much time believing in me, believing in my vision, putting up with me,” Holloway added. “And I’m not easy to put up with—you know, I’m very demanding.”
With the award, Holloway becomes both the fourth head coach in program history and the fourth former BIG EAST player to be named the award recipient.
Interestingly, he joins the company of three figures associated with SHU at one point in their basketball careers, in former Pirates point guard Dan Hurley, Holloway’s coaching predecessor and former boss Kevin Willard, and the late Louis Orr, who coached The Hall from 2001-06. Willard and Orr are also the last head coaches to win the award for SHU, winning in 2016 (Co-Coach of the Year with Villanova’s Jay Wright) and 2003, respectively.
“For me to stand up here today is so surreal, to tell you the truth,” Holloway said. “Just being a player in this league, and now having the opportunity to be Coach of the Year [is surreal].”
With several coaches around the league on record this season saying Holloway was most deserving of the award, it makes sense that the award came behind a unanimous decision—although ironic, perhaps even poetic, that these same coaches picked his Pirates to finish dead-last in the Preseason Coaches Poll.
Such a decision meant a lot to Holloway, who expressed his respect for his coaching peers, as well as how humbling an experience it is to know that that respect is mutual.
“Anytime your peers pick that, I’m humbled by it,” Holloway said. “I’m humbled by it, especially in this league, all these great coaches in this league. Night in and night out, we only get the best coaches in the country, I think, by far.”
SHU was well-represented during the whole award ceremony event. Its MC, in fact, was John Fanta, a 2017 SHU graduate and prominent play-by-play announcer and reporter for the BIG EAST who introduced Holloway before he took the podium.
“There are people at a university that are just simply embedded in the fabric of its history—that fits the mold of who we are honoring this afternoon,” Fanta said. “The head coach we are honoring today, once said these words: ‘I think that’s what our guys are going to represent: blue collar. We aren’t going out there to try to be pretty. We’re going out there to try to get the job done by any means necessary.’”
“And get the job done they have,” Fanta continued.
Named the recipient of the BIG EAST’s Media Award, NBC’s lead sports anchor Bruce Beck directly addressed Holloway in his acceptance speech.
“These days, it’s a pleasure covering Shaheen Holloway at Seton Hall,” Beck said. “I covered Shaheen as a player—when he had hair, and I didn’t have so much grey in mine.”
“Shaheen, I’m so proud of you, as a terrific head coach and a fine young man,” Beck said, getting slightly choked up. “Can I still call you ‘young man?’ I guess I’m dating myself.”
Beck also made reference to Bill Raftery, the lead game analyst for Fox Sports’ college basketball coverage and former SHU head coach who Beck said he “drank beers with after a game in the trainer’s room with.”
Fresh off winning the award, Holloway and the No. 4 Pirates will stay at MSG to face the No. 5 Creighton Bluejays in the quarterfinal round of the BIG EAST Tournament on Thursday afternoon.
“I’m looking forward to this week,” Holloway said. “It’s a great week.”
Zachary Mawby is the head editor of The Setonian’s Sports section. He can be reached at zachary.mawby@student.shu.edu.
