On Thursday night, the Seton Hall Pirates (9-1) visited the Sun Dome to deliver the USF men’s basketball team their worst loss of the season, 89-69.
As the Bulls’ toughest opponent of the season thus far, the Pirates made 10 three-point shots, versus the Bulls’ that couldn’t buy one in their eight attempts.
The Pirates came in with a game plan to shut down their opponent’s three point shooting and make them work from under the hoop.
Forward Chris Perry asserted himself into the starting lineup over recent games along with freshman Ruben Guerrero as the Bulls still search for an identity in the midst of a four-game losing streak.
On a night where the Bulls played catch-up the entire game, Perry and Guerrero did what they could as the team’s go-to guys.
Perry scored 16 points, tying a game high with Pirates’ freshman forward Angel Delgado, and recorded eight rebounds. The 6-foot-10 center from Spain, Guerrero, scored a career high in points with 13.
“Coach been telling me this past week to play angry, so that’s what I did,” Guerrero said. “I think that’s what was the big difference for me, not being nicer anymore and just play angry, play with a chip on my shoulders and work hard.”
Assistant coach Oliver Antigua, brother of head coach Orlando Antigua, left Seton Hall earlier this year to join his brother at USF, but the head coach denied any added motivation for this particular game from the team.
The assistant coach’s former peer and Pirates head coach Kevin Willard was impressed with the Antigua brothers’ young recruits, especially Guerrero.
“He is a terrific young player,” Willard said. “I think as he gets stronger too and gets a little more confidence in his game, which again, Orlando will do for him, he’s just going to get better.”
But despite starting the season 5-1 with his young stars, the Bulls find themselves one spot above the reigning NCAA champion Connecticut Huskies, who are in last place in the American Athletic Conference.
The Bulls are less than two weeks away from opening their conference schedule against Larry Brown’s SMU Mustangs (7-3) on ESPN2.
The conference will be more competitive than the Bulls’ first half of the schedule and in order to show the success once showed earlier in the year, improvements will need to take place.
Head coach Orlando Antigua is confident that his team is on the right course and that if they can get back to the basics, they’ll be fine in the long run.
“You want to go out and compete,” Orlando Antigua said. “On every possession you want to try and stick to the game plan of improving on every possession and then the results will take care of themselves. That’s what we talk to the kids about, ‘Just go out there and play the way we want to play, stick to our principles, make things tough, close out hard, box out and rebound’ and throughout the course, as long as we continue to get better, the results will happen.”
