Ahead of Monday's game, ESPN’s matchup predictor gave the No. 23 North Carolina State University Wolfpack an 83.5% chance to defeat Seton Hall men’s basketball in the opening round of the Maui Invitational.
But what ESPN didn’t account for was that head coach Shaheen Holloway and his squad didn't come to Hawaii for a fresh tan.
“I’m down here for business,” Holloway said after the game. “My team and I—we’re down here for business.”
The Pirates certainly handled business on Monday, stunning NC State, 85-74, at Lahaina Civic Center in Maui, Hawaii, as part of the quarterfinal round of the Maui Invitational.
Hosted by Chaminade University of Honolulu, the Maui Invitational is an annual early-season college basketball tournament that takes place during Thanksgiving week. This is the Pirates’ second-ever appearance in the tournament, with the first coming in 2001—during which they nearly upset the top-ranked defending national champion Duke Blue Devils in the opening round.
For NC State, this marked their first-ever appearance in the tournament. Both they and the Pirates entered this game having gone undefeated through their first four and five home games, respectively, with SHU’s 5-0 start being their best since 2014-2015.
The Pirates have stayed unbeaten so far this season largely because of their strong interior and perimeter defense. Now 6-0, this game was no different: they recorded 9 blocks (just one below their season average) and 11 steals (their third most this season), while also holding NC State to just 74 total points—well under the Wolfpack’s 100.8-point scoring average through their first four games, which was the third best in Division I men’s basketball.
After the team’s strong defensive showing, Holloway praised his players for living up to what he considers the team’s identity.
“We just played solid half-court defense—but that’s who we are,” Holloway said. “We’re a defensive team. We work on it a lot.”
“I thought we played Seton Hall basketball today,” Holloway added. “I’m happy with some things, some things we got to clean up, but for the most part, I thought we played the way we’re capable of playing, and came away with a good win.”’
Graduate guard AJ Staton McCray, who led the team with a game- and season-high 22 points while shooting 7-for-11 (63.6%) from the field and 3-for-7 (42.9%) from three, echoed his coach’s comments.
“That’s Seton Hall basketball—just playing aggressive [on] offense and defense,” Staton-McCray said. “So we really came out and did that today.”
Staton-McCray was one of six Pirates to finish the game in double-figures. Others included Mike Williams—who scored a career-high 14 points and outperformed his same-named counterpart on NC State, Darrion Williams, who entered the game averaging 23.3 points per game—along with Adam “Budd” Clark (13 points), Elijah Fisher (also 13), Tajuan Simpkins (11), and Najai Hines (10).
In addition to playing aggressively, Staton-McCray said the team knew at halftime that communication on defense would be key to closing out the win.
“We just knew what it was coming out of halftime,” Staton-McCray said. “We communicated with each other, we talked to each other at halftime. And just as long as we talked on the court, as long as there's no miscommunication, we’re all good defensively. We just got to continue having that within 40 minutes of the game.”
But perhaps the biggest key to the Pirates’ win was contesting every 3-pointer taken by NC State, who entered the contest fourth in the NCAA with an average of 13.3 made threes per game and 14th with a 3-point percentage of 43.1%. The Pirates managed to hold the Wolfpack below both marks, with Holloway saying after the game that the win wouldn’t have been possible without them doing so.
“NC State is really good, they got great scorers, they can really shoot the basketball,” Holloway said. “One of the keys was just to take away the three, because I thought if they made threes, we had no shot of beating them. So I thought we did a great job contesting that [and] understanding who can shoot.”
With the win, the Pirates will not only face the University of Southern California (USC) Trojans in the semifinal of the Maui Invitational, scheduled for Nov. 25, but also become the only unranked team to beat a ranked opponent so far this season. According to ESPN’s Jeff Borzello, before the game, ranked teams were 96-0 vs unranked opponents this season—the longest win streak in AP poll history.
With a short turnaround, Holloway emphasized that he doesn’t want the team to be satisfied with just their upset over NC State—there’s still more work to be done and more chances to prove that this isn’t last year’s team.
“This [is] just the first step in our journey,” Holloway said in closing. “We got a long way to go, we can’t get happy with this…there’s [still] a lot of basketball to be played.”
Zachary Mawby is the head editor of The Setonian’s Sports section. He can be reached at zachary.mawby@student.shu.edu.
