No. 13 Seton Hall looks to keep FAMU winless

The 13th-ranked Seton Hall Pirates, who are still eligible for the postseason despite getting placed on three years of NCAA probation last week, will play host to the winless Florida A&M Rattlers on Saturday afternoon.

Seton Hall (3-1) has just one loss this season - 76-73 to third-ranked Michigan State.

The Pirates are led by 6-2 senior guard Myles Powell, an All-American who averaged 23.1 points last season.

Powell, the Big East Conference's Preseason Player of the Year and a 2020 NBA Draft first-round prospect, sprained his left ankle in a Nov. 9 win over Stony Brook.

"It affected us a lot," Seton Hall guard Quincy McKnight said. "It's hard when (Powell) goes down, and it's only the second game of the season."

Fortunately for the Pirates, Powell did not miss any games, returning five days later for the Michigan State game. Powell scored 37 points in that game, going 6-of-14 on three-pointers.

"I don't know if even God could have stopped Powell on some of his shots," Michigan State coach Tom Izzo quipped. "(Powell) deserves every accolade. He does an incredible job. I don't know who can guard him."

Powell scored 26 points in Seton Hall's next game, an 83-66 win over Saint Louis on Sunday.

"We wanted to make a statement," Powell said of the win over Saint Louis. "We wanted to show (Seton Hall's near-win over Michigan State) was not a fluke. We felt we should have won that game."

Seton Hall is coached by Kevin Willard. He sat out the Pirates' season opener as part of the punishment for the program's impermissible contacts with a player who was on Syracuse's roster at the time.

But now that the punishment has been announced, the Pirates can focus on their legitimate championship hopes.

Four starters - including Powell and 6-4 senior point guard McKnight - return as The Hall bids to go one step further than its 1988-89 team, which made it to the NCAA championship game before losing to the Michigan Wolverines.

The other returning Pirates starters are 6-6 junior wing Myles Cale and 6-11, 240-pound junior forward Sandro Mamukelashvili.

Meanwhile, Florida A&M (0-4) is coming off an 85-82 loss against South Dakota State at a neutral site in Honolulu as part of the Outriggers Resorts Rainbow Classic.

Rod Melton, a 6-1 junior guard, led the Rattlers with a career-high 27 points in that loss. The Rattlers shot 49.2 percent from the floor in that game but just 60 percent from the foul line (21-of-35).

Robert McMullen, who is in his third year as Rattlers coach, has three starters and four reserves back from last season's team that posted a 12-19 record.

The returning starters for the Rattlers are 6-2 junior point guard Kamron Reaves, 6-4 sophomore shooting guard M.J. Randolph and 6-9 junior center D.J. Jones.

Randolph was the Mid Eastern Athletic Conference Freshman of the Year last season, and forms a solid backcourt with Reaves, who was Florida A&M's leading scorer.

The Rattlers, however, are ineligible for the postseason in 2020 due to NCAA sanctions.

--Field Level Media