Despite a 47-point win against St. Peter’s on Tuesday, interim head coach Lauren DeFalco still saw major room for improvement for the Pirates to make prior to their next game. When the Wagner Seahawks strolled into the historic Walsh Gymnasium on Seton Hall’s campus on Friday, they would have no clue what hit them.
In an offensive explosion, the Pirates beat down on the Seahawks by 43 points in their second game of the year, improving to 2-0 on the season. They looked like the superior team right out the gate and ended the first quarter up 23-16 but suffered a huge loss as Femi Funeus went down with a leg injury two minutes into the game and had to be taken off. The severity of the injury is still unknown, but DeFalco said it did not look good for Funeus.
In the second quarter, the team scored 35 points that included a 19-0 run to set a new program record for most points in a single quarter. DeFalco credited the second quarter performance to the Pirates’s defense, allowing the Seahawks just 11 points and shooting 75% from the field during their own possessions.
The team did not allow more than 13 points to be scored in a quarter for the rest of the game, stymieing the Wagner offense even with an 18-point performance from Emilija Krista Grava. While Grava was one of two Seahawks to break the double-digit plateau for points, four Pirates were able to surpass the 10-point echelon, including a 27-point eruption from sophomore Mya Jackson.
“I thought she came out determined tonight,” DeFalco said. “Mya really set the tone today and she really got us through that tough first quarter and helped us in that second quarter. She has grown. She’s always going to be good because Mya puts the work in.”
Even after losing Funeus in the first quarter and still being without head coach Anthony Bozzella, the team delivered a commanding performance in their second game of the season. DeFalco recognized this adversity when judging her team’s performance, and though she wasn’t without criticism, she applauded how they fought through it to claim a 96-53 win over Wagner.
“We need to get better defensively, we need to get better at communicating, and we need to get better at overall team defense,” DeFalco said. “But I saw a lot of good things.”
Brendan Balsamo can be reached at brendan.balsamo@student.shu.edu. Follow him on Twitter @brenbal.
