INDIANAPOLIS – Enjoy him while he’s still here.
In other words: enjoy it for the next week or two.
This should be the St. Peters’ mantra regarding head coach Shaheen Holloway.
He was an active player in the college basketball coaching community in that NCAA Tournament due to the work he did at St. Peters.
Then on Thursday, he went to coach Kentucky coach John Calipari and engineered a stunning loss for his 15th seeded Peacocks to the second-seeded Wildcats.
Now look what he did: Holloway has the St. Peters, who had not won an NCAA Tournament in school history until Thursday, in the Sweet 16 after a 70-60 loss against No. 7 Murray State on Saturday night. .
Sweet devil 16.
Now Holloway is a hot commodity, perhaps the most significant coaching story in college basketball right now.
Shaheen Holloway gives instructions to Matthew Lee during St. Peter’s upset 70-60 victory over Murray State.Getty Images
Now it seems impossible for St. Peters to keep him for his fifth year in Jersey City.
Considering the comments made by Seton Hall coach Kevin Willard after the Pirates were smoked out by TCU in their Friday night first round game in San Diego, it sounds like there’s at least a decent chance that Willard is heading to Maryland, and Holloway has more than one. kicked in the door in South Orange, New Jersey, as his successor.
“If I’m not here next year, I would love to have Shaheen Holloway here,” Willard told reporters. “That would be the happiest thing that has ever happened to me.”
Willard is Holloway’s mentor, who starred at Seton Hall from 1996 to 2000 and worked with the Pirates coach at both Iona and Seton Hall.
Current Seton Hall athletic director Brian Felt was the publicity director at St. Peters in 2018 when he hired Holloway to host a program there, and they remain close.
“Shaheen, what an incredible job he did,” Felt said in an interview with Asbury Park Press the other day. “When I hired him I knew what he could do and to do it [at Saint Peter’s] in four years where you could see improvement every year, it’s amazing.”
You don’t have to be a world-class Wordle expert or a Rubik’s Cube expert to realize that there aren’t too many dots to connect here.
Shaheen HollowayAP
Sources told Zach Braziller of The Post that Holloway at Seton Hall is already a deal when Willard leaves. I spent some time before Saturday’s game with family and friends of some of the St. Peters players, and they spoke as if they didn’t expect Holloway to still coach the Peacox after this run.
And that was before the Peacocks defeated Murray State.
On Friday night at least, Willard was vague about his future at Seton Hall.
“I will give you exactly what I can tell you,” he said. “I have an agent that I haven’t talked to yet. I don’t know who he’s talking to, I have no idea. But when I get home [Saturday]I will talk to my agent and discuss everything with my agent.”
Holloway told The Post before the game against Kentucky that he was not thinking about Seton Hall or any other job other than St. Peter’s Church.
“I don’t think about those things,” Holloway said. “Whatever happens, happens. This material will take care of itself. Right now I’m just focused on being the best coach I can be at St. Peters with these young gentlemen looking up to me while I’m coaching these guys trying to find a way to get upset. [Thursday] night.”
Well, not only did Holloway find a way to upset that Thursday night, he trained the more experienced Calipari in the process.
He then beat Murray State, who entered the game with the nation’s best record (31-2) and a 21-game winning streak.
Holloway is a great combination of a manager who is demanding and confident in what he does and humble but deeply cares about his players.
Confident Holloway: “We came here on a mission,” he said on Friday. “We said we were leaving on Sunday with two wins.”
Humble Holloway: “It’s about the players,” he said after beating Kentucky. “These guys put up with my stupidity in practice every day. I’m so proud of them and so happy for them because these are moments that people can’t take away from them. These guys came and destroyed one of the biggest schools in the country. They will remember this moment for the rest of their lives.”
Let’s hope his Peacocks cherish every remaining moment with his coach, because if Willard leaves Seton Hall, Holloway’s absence to replace him will be more of a disappointment than the two Saint Peters created this week.