Three weeks ago, Seton Hall looked like a team doomed to finish at the bottom of the Big East standings. Picked to finish 13th out of 16 teams in the conference in the preseason coach’s poll, the Pirates were living up to their lowly expectations. On Jan. 3 they began league play by losing to Connecticut 98-86 at home. Then they came up short on the road against Marquette, losing 61-56. Four days later, they fell at Pittsburgh 84-70. But then the Pirates started winning. First, they took down South Florida. Then, they handled Louisville, breezed past Providence and squeaked by Cincinnati. On Wednesday night, they outscored Rutgers 17-4 in overtime to win 84-71. Remarkably, Seton Hall now stands in a five-way tie for third place in the Big East. Having won five games in a row, they enter tomorrow’s game at Verizon Center as perhaps the hottest team in the league. “You move on to a Seton Hall team that is playing as well or better than anyone in the conference right now, so we have to come in extremely focused and play well if we want to win on Saturday,” Georgetown Head Coach John Thompson III said Thursday on the Big East coaches conference call. Still, Georgetown remains the leader of the pack in the Big East, and the Hoyas are especially difficult to beat at home. They have won 15 games in a row at Verizon Center, a streak that dates back to a 56-52 loss to Villanova on Jan. 8, 2007. Georgetown has also been on a tear in conference play. The Hoyas have won 22 of their last 24 Big East games. The Hoyas will have to work hard on the defensive end, however, as Seton Hall knows how to score points. The Pirates rank 14th in the country in scoring offense – averaging 81.7 points per contest. “Watching them, they have many different people that can step up and hurt you,” Thompson said. “A lot of teams, you go through and you look and say `OK, if we stop person A and person B, you know we should be OK,’ but they have a lot of different offensive weapons and they seem to be extremely comfortable and confident in each other, in that they make the extra pass.” Seton Hall’s top five scorers are all 6-foot-5 or shorter. Senior Brian Laing nets 19.3 points per game, and sophomore Eugene Harvey scores 15.8 per game. The Pirates’ main threats from deep are freshman Jeremy Hazell (53-of-144 on three-point attempts) and senior Jamar Nutter (43-of-107), but Seton Hall only shoots 34.3 percent from long range. The problem for the Pirates, though, is that they also have a propensity for letting the other team score. They rank 310th in scoring defense, giving up 77.8 points per game. Georgetown, on the other hand, is stingy on the defensive end. In fact, the Hoyas might be the best defensive team in the country, ranking first nationally in field-goal percentage defense, holding opponents to a dismal 35.8 percent clip on the season. In many ways, tomorrow’s game will be a matchup between a polished team – a first place team – and a team that is on the rise. Georgetown has more talent and more experience, but the Pirates cannot be taken lightly. “They are growing, they are improving,” Thompson said. Tomorrow will be big test to see how far they have come. Tip-off is set for noon at Verizon Center.