It took 11 years for the Seton Hall Pirates men's basketball program to earn a top 25 ranking, but it took just five days for them to lose it, as Friday night Seton Hall lost at the South Florida Bulls, 56-55, at the Tampa Bay Times Forum in Tampa Bay, FL. The Pirates (15-3, 4-2 Big East), who earned a No. 24 ranking in the AP Poll but failed to earn enough votes to be ranked in the USA Today/ESPN Coaches' Poll, will most certainly lose that honor come Monday when the new polls are released.
"The Pirates certainly didn't play to the level you'd expect to see out of a Top-25 team," wrote the SB Nation blog South Orange Juice Friday night." For as wrong as the coaches were for leaving the Pirates out of the ESPN/USA Today Poll, well, the team did them no favors and they've now got the last laugh."
The Pirates led by 10 points with about six minutes left, but failed to hang on when senior guard Jordan Theodore missed the front-end of a one-and-one situation at the free throw line in the final seconds.
The team that could replace Seton Hall in the standings could be Big East Conference foe, West Virginia Mountaineers (12-5, 3-2), who hosts the Rutgers Scarlet Knights (10-7, 2-2) Saturday (2 p.m. on SNY). A victory for the Mountaineers, who earned votes in both polls last week, could be enough for them to vault into the new edition of the college basketball rankings.
SB Nation's South Orange Juice has everything on Seton Hall basketball. For more on Big East basketball, visit the SB Nation blog Big East Coast Bias. For more news and analysis from the day in NCAA hoops, visit SB Nation's college basketball hub.