PHILADELPHIA — Here’s the thing about pressure. You can feel it, or you can inflict it. In the week leading up to Saint Peter’s latest chance at the impossible, Shaheen Holloway insisted that his squad wouldn’t be the ones feeling it. Pressure is playing out your senior year of high school without a Division I scholarship offer. Pressure is entering the transfer portal in search of greener pastures and then asking back on the squad with your hat in your hand. Pressure is the day-to-day grind in a place like Jersey City.
At a school like Saint Peter’s, you build your roster out of young men who know pressure. A basketball game? Nah, that ain’t it.
They had one option, then. In a regional semifinal where they had no business belonging, against an over-sized team with NBA pedigree and a name-brand head coach, the only thing the Peacocks could do was take all of the stress and angst and self-awareness that was supposed to cripple them on this large a stage and they could turn it around and make the other guys feel it. They could crash the boards and win the spots and pick up their men at three-quarter court. They could play to the crowd and find their anchors within it, flashing hand signs to friends and flexing to classmates. They could flip the magnitude on its head and wield the one weapon in their sole possession: the ability to afflict the comfortable.
