Seton Hall and Washington State suffered extremely frustrating losses in their semifinal games after successful opening matches of the Maui Invitational in Lahaina, Hawaii.
Both teams hope to avoid further 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 opener Monday. Beating the only ranked team in the field set up a meeting 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 an AJ Staton-McCray jumper with 1:02 left and trailed by one with six seconds remaining, but were never able to regain the lead and were frustrated by a 38-18 disparity in free throw attempts as well as a 28-19 foul disparity.
“Tough, tough way to lose,” Pirates coach Shaheen Holloway said in a postgame radio interview after his team shot 56.1 percent.
“The guys played hard, that’s all you can ask for, we gave ourselves a chance. We have to learn from it.”
The Pirates are getting strong performances from Staton-McCray, who followed up her 22-point performance in Game 1 with 17 points on Tuesday. Adam Clark led Seton Hall with 18 points, but the Pirates were overwhelmed 35-21 and were unable to fully capitalize on 16 USC turnovers.
Washington State (3-4) opened the tournament with a 90-85 victory over Chaminade on Monday when Ace Glass III scored 26 off the bench. Glass started for the first time Tuesday and scored a program-high 40 points as a freshman, but the Cougars suffered a 100-94 loss to Arizona State, which they allowed to shoot 58.9 percent from the field.
Washington State also squandered a double-digit lead by leading by 12 early in the second half and missing 14 of its final 20 shots.
“I thought we definitely made progress,” Washington State coach David Riley said. “Our guys showed good spirit for 40 minutes, were competitive and played a little less than us. The mistakes we made were aggressive. The reality is you can’t give up 100 points and win too many games, and we have to understand that aspect a little more.”
–Field level media
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