The ball finally dropped through the hoop, and Myles Powell came lightly jogging back the other way with a smile — backpedaling to the opposite baseline and slapping fives with members of the student section.

After a frustrating evening, the National Player of the Year candidate was able to exhale.

“It was just like a relief,” he said. “Once I hit the 3, I put my hands up, like, ‘finally.’ ”

With the game on the line, Powell’s missing-in-action shooting touch was back. With his team on the ropes, he was able to push his struggles aside. The senior exploded for 12 points in the final 6:45 of Seton Hall’s 10th straight victory, a come-from-behind, 64-57 win over DePaul at Prudential Center on Wednesday night that extended the 10th-ranked Pirates’ program-record Big East start to 8-0.

“I’m just starting to accept I’m a second-half player,” said Powell, who finished with 24 points on 7 of 21 shooting as Seton Hall tallied its first double-digit win streak since the 1992-93 season.

Powell’s 3-pointer with 4:33 left pushed the lead to seven, capping an 9-0 run in which he scored every point. Before the run, Seton Hall coach Kevin Willard could be seen ripping into Powell. Neither Powell nor Willard remembered the root of the tongue-lashing. Powell said it was tough love; Willard insisted he wanted to make sure his star player could hear him over the loud crowd.

“He knows that I can take it,” Powell said. “Clearly, it worked.”

Quincy McKnight and Jared Rhoden were just as integral as Powell in the hard-fought win. Rhoden, a sophomore, tallied his second double-double of the year with 14 points and 11 rebounds, providing much-needed offense when Powell was cold. In the big run, McKnight supplied game-changing defense and assisted on Powell’s go-ahead layup. It included what Willard called a “monster play.”

Seton Hall (16-4, 8-0 Big East) was down a point with just over six minutes left when Powell was stripped by DePaul point guard Charlie Moore, who took off on a two-on-one break. Moore lofted the ball up for an alley-oop, but McKnight blocked the pass then saved the ball off DePaul’s Jalen Coleman-Lands, giving Seton Hall possession. It would score on its next four possessions to regain control.

“I just gave him a big hug,” Powell said.

Added McKnight, who had nine points, six assists and four steals: “You can kind of tell when a point guard is going to throw an alley-[oop], just by the way he runs and he slows down on the break.”

Romaro Gill snuffed out DePaul’s chances of a last-minute comeback, rejecting Romeo Weems’ dunk attempt with 41.6 seconds left and the Pirates up five. Soon, they would be celebrating another win, albeit an ugly one. Seton Hall was a ghastly 14 of 29 from the foul line and shot just 38 percent from the field. Powell made just 2 of 10 attempts from 3-point range. However, the Pirates prevailed anyway, winning for the seventh time this year in 10 games when trailing at halftime.

“There’s really nothing much any team can throw at us that we haven’t seen yet this year,” Powell said.

Junior forward Sandro Mamukelashvili made his return from a seven-week absence due to a fractured right wrist and scored a point in five first-half minutes.