The men's basketball team was topped by Fairleigh Dickinson on Sunday in a game the Pirates entered in as 22 point favorites.
Fairleigh Dickinson, who snuck up and defeated Rutgers last week, did not take the lopsided line into consideration. Neither did point guard Sidney Sanders.
Sanders scored 23 points and tallied nine assists in the upset win.
"I really liked watching this kid play," Seton Hall head coach Kevin Willard said. "We had watched their previous three game's films and knew what he was capable of."
The Pirates took an early lead in the first half, but sloppy play and inconsistent shooting barely kept the Pirates in the game. A 13-4 run by Farleigh Dickinson helped the Knights take a 26-22 lead into halftime.
"I don't think anything went right for us today," Willard said. "We had three good days of practice leading up to this, watched a lot of film, but we came out like we were playing in quicksand."
The Pirates were never out of the game, and as Willard agreed postgame, the issue was more on the offensive side of the ball.
"Our efforts weren't bad on the defensive end, it's just our pace was bad," Willard said. "We had a lot of guys just standing around while other guys were dribbling. We have a tendency to do that sometimes."
Right when Seton Hall caught up with the pace in the second half, they were right there to shoot themselves in the foot.
With a chance to give the Pirates a lead late in the game, forward Brandon Mobley was blocked by Scooter Gillette.
Sanders sunk two important free throws with 20.2 seconds left to stretch the lead to 57-54 and added another with five seconds left to put the Pirates out for good.
The good thing for the Pirates is they have a quick turnaround with a game on Thursday against LIU Brooklyn.
"That's the good part, it's a quick turnaround," Mobley said. "We just learn from this and we move on. You can't say 'Well if (Eugene) Teague would've played or if this would've happened it would've been different.' No, you just have to move on."
According to Willard, Teague has spent some time in the hospital over the past couple of days dealing with food poisoning. He logged 14 minutes and scored six points.
The win was just the fourth victory for FDU over Seton Hall in the school's 21 meetings. The Pirates will face LIU Brooklyn at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 5, at the Prudential Center.
David Heim can be reached at david.heim@student.shu.edu.
