Shaheen Holloway is the coach of the moment in men’s college basketball. He leads Saint Peter’s, the No. 15 seed out of Jersey City that knocked out John Calipari’s Kentucky on Thursday and followed it up with a win over Murray State on Saturday. The Peacocks are the third No. 15 to make it this far, with all coming in the last decade. Florida Gulf Coast beat Georgetown and San Diego State in 2013, and Oral Roberts took down Ohio State and Florida last year. While FGCU, aka Dunk City, made hay with shocking athleticism and ORU shocked the world with its great shooting, Saint Peter’s is doing it with defense and … not a lot else that makes any sense. Both FGCU and ORU lost in the Sweet 16. Saint Peter’s probably will, too. But then again, who am I to apply logic to one of the most magical teams in the history of March Madness?
If you want to convince yourself that they’ll keep on rolling, just listen to Holloway, who will make you believe that anything is possible and also not that big a deal. After the Kentucky stunner, CBS sideline reporter Jamie Erdahl asked him if he gets nervous, and Holloway replied, “Nah. For what? It’s basketball.” The average Saint Peter’s player is 6-foot-4, making them the 295th-tallest team in Division I, per Ken Pomeroy’s tracking. After the Peacocks’ second win, over Murray State, a reporter asked Holloway what he said to his players when the Racers, a physical bunch, tried to “muscle in” on them. His answer:
I’m going to say this. It’s going to come off a little crazy. I got guys from New Jersey and New York City. You think we’re scared of anything? You think we’re worried about guys trying to muscle us and tough us out? We do that. That’s who we are. We are a very physical team. Our bodies probably don’t look like it, but these guys play very hard and very physical.
I have never met this man but will headbutt bricks if that is what he commands.
Holloway started at Saint Peter’s before the 2018-19 season, taking over a team that had finished third-to-last in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, the most middling of mid-major leagues. He pushed the team toward the top of the standings, but couldn’t quite win a regular season title or conference tournament. At the start of this year, it didn’t look like that pattern was going to change. The Peacocks started the season 3-6, including a loss to a St. Francis (Brooklyn) team that finished 10-20. Saint Peter’s then didn’t play for a month, thanks to a COVID pause that Holloway has credited for saving their season. “When we had the layoff, it put things in perspective and gave me a chance to get back to the drawing board and get back to what we do best, and that’s defend,” he said.
Saint Peter’s finished second in the MAAC standings behind Rick Pitino’s Iona Gaels, their success indeed fueled by voracious defense. While their scoring ability cannot be described as anything better than mediocre, they block shots despite not being big, they close out with the heat of a thousand suns, and they scrap like hell for everything they get. The last three years, they’ve finished 32nd, eighth, and most recently sixth in the nation in effective field goal percentage allowed. It was that defense that carried them through the MAAC tournament, earning them an automatic NCAA berth. And in the last few days, we’ve seen how their toughness and smarts on that side of the ball, combined with timely shot-making, can make them competitive against anyone in the country. The “timely” thing is important. Guard Daryl Banks found a career-high 27 against Kentucky at exactly the right time. Guard Doug Edert was 2-for-2 on three-pointers and 8-of-8 at the foul line, and the Peacocks needed all of them.
Everything about this Saint Peter’s team demands to be appreciated at this exact moment. For one thing, the 45-year-old Holloway may not be in Jersey City for long. He is a former point guard and longtime assistant coach at Seton Hall, whose head coach, Kevin Willard, is by all accounts about to move to Maryland. After Willard got blown out in the first round of the tournament, he stumped at his press conference for Holloway to succeed him. (Maryland fans, myself included, have been left to wonder why the Terps are not hiring Holloway rather than his former boss, who has half as many NCAA tournament wins in 15 years as his old understudy does in three days.) Holloway is destined for an exciting path in coaching, and Saint Peter’s will probably learn what Florida Gulf Coast and Oral Roberts did before them: that maintaining momentum is hard. So enjoy it while it lasts, because teams like Saint Peter’s are not in vogue these days.
For starters, Holloway has turned over a lot of stones to build this roster. Saint Peter’s has nine players from the continental United States (six from New York and New Jersey) plus another from Puerto Rico. It has five African players, too—two each from Senegal and Mali, one from the Central African Republic. The Peacocks lost seven men off last year’s roster and replaced them with five freshmen and two transfers. But there is also something old-timey about Saint Peter’s, given that the core of the team—the top six scorers—are all juniors or seniors who have played together for at least three years.
The loosening of player movement rules and the rise of the transfer portal have meant that a lot of teams turn over their key roster spots every season. The trend is great for players, who should be allowed to change schools with the same freedom as their well-compensated coaches. But it’s also worth praising a program that apparently does enough things right that its players do not want to leave en masse.
There is no need to lie and claim that this continuity has produced gorgeous offensive basketball. No one averages more than 11 points per game, and nobody other than Edert (42.5 percent 3-point shooting) is a great marksman. The Peacocks don’t even like to take many 3s, despite their small stature, and prefer to go directly at bigger opponents.
It has worked for them because they are extremely hard to score on. Saint Peter’s blocked 14.6 percent of all opposing field goal attempts this year, the 13th-highest rate in the country per Pomeroy. (Last year, the Peacocks were second in the country in that stat.) You could attribute most of that to playing in the MAAC, but the Peacocks have been game against bigger fish, too. They blocked four shots against Kentucky, a 6.6 percent block rate that narrowly exceeded what the Wildcats usually allowed. They blocked seven against Murray State.
They turned on their offense in these games, too, scoring 77.5 points per game, up from a season average of 67.5. (They did have the benefit of an overtime period against Kentucky.)
Banks was the star against Kentucky, with a lot of help from Edert. Senior forward KC Ndefo paced the ‘Cocks with 17 against Murray State, also near a career-high output. That’s the magic of Saint Peter’s: While there’s certainly some method to their buildup over the last four years, they are winning these games with a whole lot of madness. The Peacocks are doing things they are not supposed to do, repeatedly.
That none of this should be happening is a big part of the fun. No. 15 seeds aren’t supposed to win, period. Teams with lousy offenses are not supposed to win shootouts against Kentucky. A bunch of short guys aren’t supposed to block shots. Teams with zero March Madness wins in their history (and really not a sniff, in Saint Peter’s case) aren’t supposed to get two in a weekend. But like Shaheen Holloway says, it’s basketball. And Saint Peter’s is playing it just as well as anybody.
