newjerseynewsroom.com

BY MIKE VORKUNOV

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

Call it a Governor's reprieve.

With its slim NCAA Tournament hopes still in their grasp, Seton Hall barely scraped out a game against fellow bubble-buddy Notre Dame at the Prudential Center with Governor Chris Christie sitting courtside.

Needing every victory from here on out, they got one as the Irish missed a last-second three pointer and then a wide-open one with no time remaining and the Pirates barely held on for a 90-87 victory.

"We've had our heart broken a couple times and sometimes you get on the other side of the luck and today we did," said Gonzalez of the final sequence, ironically enough coming against a team with a nickname based on getting lucky.

Seton Hall came into the evening starting the weaker part of its schedule, at least as easy as it can get in the Big East. With every brutal, heart-wrenching loss in January to one Top 10 team after another, Gonzalez kept pointing to now as the time where the schedule came back to them.

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So it wasn't lost on any of the Pirates how big it was to come out on top Thursday night and start their stretch run.

"Oh, definitely, this was the jump start of the thing," said Jeremy Hazell. "This was the start, where you shoot the gun. Where you start running. This was it. Now we just gotta come to the finish line and be number one. It started today and now we just gotta keep it rolling with Sunday's game."

Hazell, of course, had something to do with that. Actually, a lot.

He exploded for 35 points, on an efficient 12-of-16 shooting. He hit eight three-pointers, one off his career high and Seton Hall game high, on just 11 tries. It was the epitome of what he had not been since the midpoint of the Pirates' loss at Villanova.

At the end of the loss to the Wildcats, he was benched by Gonzalez in hopes of teaching him a lesson on shot selection. Then at Pittsburgh he came off the bench to score only two points on 1-of-7 shooting and missed all five from beyond the arc.

Gonzalez said Hazell's performance at Pittsburgh had more to do with the job the Panthers did, but Hazell has made it a frequent occurrence to hit shots that others would get benched for.

"I knew he was going to come back and have a great game," said Gonzalez. "A lot of people were wondering about me disciplining him or him getting two points. What they don't understand is how resilient the kid is and how that does not matter. Two minutes after those things happened he was thinking about what he was eating for lunch. So sometimes I think people misunderstand kids. They're not concerned about that kind of stuff. They don't hang on to things very long."

After the performance in Pittsburgh, Hazell hit the gym for two hours every day leading up to last night to get extra shots up. It paid off.

"Everything felt so smooth, so right," said Hazell. "Everything looked good."

He did have help though. Eugene Harvey started for the first time since Jan. 2nd against Virginia Tech, with Gonzalez saying it was his way of challenging the point guard because he would be matched up against fellow senior Tory Jackson.

Harvey responded with nine points, ten assists and only one turnover.

"I did [take it as a challenge]," he said. "I know this team goes as I go."

But how far it will go is a different story.

"This is our last seven games and we need to go night in, night out like it's a championship," said Harvey. "We gotta play every team like it's sudden death."

That meant that blowing one against Notre Dame was out of the question.

But it almost came to that. With Luke Harangody missing the final 4:40, and quiet before that with just 13 points and six rebounds, the Irish still had a chance to tie it thanks to Jackson's 25 points and six assists.

After Keon Lawrence missed the front end of a one-and-one with seven seconds remaining, Tim Abromitis – a 48.6 percent three-point shooter – had a good look from the left wing with less than two seconds to go but missed it. The Irish ran down the loose ball and got it to a wide-open Carleton Scott in the corner but it hit the far side of the rim as the final buzzer went off.

"When you get the second one you're thinking the basketball gods will get it to overtime," said Notre Dame coach Mike Brey. "Not tonight."

And Seton Hall is thankful for that, because it means their NCAA Tournament hopes live on.