TASTY TIDBITS, Dehere recalls his senior year at Seton Hall

Terry Dehere (right) talks to yours truly at a Seton Hall game last season

Photo courtesy of APP.com

TASTY TIDBITS

Sudden end to sensational Seton Hall season brings back memories for Dehere

The college basketball season ended without the usual March Madness, namely the NCAA Tournament, thanks to the coronavirus outbreak that totally stifled all of sports.

It was particularly frustrating for local college basketball fans, considering that Shaheen Holloway’s Peacocks of St. Peter’s University were sitting with the No. 2 seed in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference standings and were poised to make a possible run at the NCAAs in just Holloway’s second season as the head coach of the Peacocks.

Holloway was rewarded for his spectacular second season at Harvard on the Boulevard by being named the MAAC Coach of the Year, an honor richly deserved.

But what about Holloway’s alma mater, namely Seton Hall? The Pirates were 21-9, ranked No. 11 in the entire nation and finished in a three-way tie with Villanova and Creighton for the regular season championship of the Big East Conference, before everything came to a screeching halt earlier this month.

In fact, a lot of people thought that the Pirates had the makings of making a deep run in the NCAA Tournament with First Team All-America and Big East Player of the Year Myles Powell leading the way.

The Pirates were so deep and talented that it made people recall the 1992-93 Pirate team that went 28-7, won both the Big East regular season and Big East Tournament championship and headed to the NCAA Tournament as the No. 6 team in the entire country.

And there was no one better to remember that season than Jersey City’s own Terry Dehere, who remains the school’s all-time leading scorer with an incredible 2,494 points.

Dehere was the Big East Player of the Year that year, averaging 22 points per game, and won the Big East Tournament Most Valuable Player award as well.

That team featured players like Arturas Karnishovas, Bryan Caver and three other Jersey City natives in Jerry Walker, Danny Hurley and Luther Wright.

Although the Pirates lost to Western Kentucky in the second round of the NCAAs, they were picked by many to perhaps win the whole tournament, because they had a deep roster, a lot like this year’s team. In fact, the similarities between the two teams are startling.

“I think they had all the components to have a deep run,” Dehere said last week. “They were one of the better Seton Hall teams since our team in 1993. They had the potential and the makeup to go far in the NCAAs. I think this is by far the best team Seton Hall has had in a long time.”

Dehere recalled his senior year with the Pirates.

“We had the chance to play some big time teams, like Duke and UNLV,” Dehere said. “We had the chance to see other teams we didn’t normally see. We had a good team and had a lot of fun that year. It was a shame that it ended the way it did.”

Much like the way this season ended for the Pirates – with sudden disappointment and sadness.

“It is disappointing, because this ended everything,” Dehere said. “It wasn’t just college basketball. It was all of sports and entertainment. I think it’s important to have sports, because then we’re not all focused on the pandemic. We don’t have any distractions and after a while, reality sinks in. I feel bad for those kids, because they didn’t get a chance to play at the end of the season.”

We will never know just how deep of a run that this Seton Hall team could have made in March Madness…

Someone once said that everything in New Jersey sports somehow always gets tied back to Jersey City. Well, here’s proof – a little.

The Ramapo College baseball roster this season – if the Roadrunners played more than the two games they played prior to the season being cancelled – featured a freshman catcher named Sean Donaghue and two assistant coaches named T.J. Ward and Nick Camilleri.

Well, Ward and Camilleri both played their high school baseball at St. Peter’s Prep and were selected as All-Area baseball players in this corner, with Ward being named twice as a Player of the Year. On the other hand, Donaghue, whose hometown and high school is listed as Marlboro on the roster, is the son of retired Jersey City Police Inspector Hugh Donaghue, who played his high school baseball at Hudson Catholic.

Sean Donaghue is the cousin to Hudson Catholic girls’ basketball freshman sensation Megan Gentile, who is the daughter of former St. Peter’s College women’s basketball superstar Patty Marchese Gentile and Gary Gentile, who is the vice principal at Ferris. Now, that’s Six Degrees of Hudson County for you.

We’ll be back next week with more tidbits on the blog. If you have anything you would like to add to the blog, just drop me a note at OGSMAR@aol.com. If it’s worthy, I’d be glad to add it to the blog next week. And as always, thanks for reading.