The Seton Hall Men's basketball team led No. 9 Notre Dame by as many as eleven points in the first half but dropped another conference game on the road 60-48.
The loss drops the Pirates to 11-17 overall and 5-11 in the Big East while the Irish improve to 23-5 and 12-4 in conference play.
Notre Dame received a pair of twenty point performances from Tim Abromaitis and Ben Hansbrough who finished with 22 and 21 points respectively in the victory. Jeff Robinson led the Pirates with 16 points and Jeremy Hazell chipped in with 14 of his own, passing former Pirate Greg Tynes for third on Seton Hall's all-time scoring list.
The Hall jumped out to a 25-14 lead with under three minutes in the first half, but a 10-2 run to close the half turned the momentum in Notre Dame's favor, capped off by a three point basket at the buzzer by Abromaitis, cutting the it to 27-24.
The Pirates held the Irish to 32 percent shooting in the first half on 8-25 from the field. Notre Dame would answer offensively in the second half however, shooting 47.8 percent on 11-23, finishing 39.6 percent overall. On the other side, Seton Hall managed just 30.4 percent shooting on 17-56 from the floor.
While Seton Hall dominated the points in the paint 22-10 and scored 18 points off of 15 Notre Dame turnovers, the Irish outrebounded the Pirates 41-32 and had 15 second chance points.
Forwards Herb Pope and Jeff Robinson combined for just nine rebounds in the loss while Abromaitis, Tyrone Nash and Carleton Scott pulled down eight, nine, and ten rebounds respectively for Notre Dame.
Up next for the Pirates is a St. John's Red Storm team coming off a victory against the No. 15 ranked Villanova Wildcats down in Philadelphia.
Dwight Hardy had a career-high 34 in the win and will look to continue his hot streak when the Storm visit the Prudential Center Thursday night. Tip-off is set for 7 p.m.
Zack Cziryak can be reached at zachary.cziryak@student.shu.edu.
