Roses

Some things transcend sports. Not many things mind you, but one of those things is life. It's stories like those of Seton Hall senior Jeremy Hazell from Harlem that I'm talkin about.


This past XMAS night, him and a friend were coming home from a party when they were held up at gunpoint. When the two attempted to run away, Hazell was shot in his right armpit. You want to talk about divine intervention: as he was running up the block, a ambulance was coming down the street. As Hazell said, "I was just blessed". In addition to recovering from the gunshot, he was also recovering from wrist surgery done a month earlier.

Yet Hazell, who last night became the school's sixth all time leading scorer with more than 1,900 points, has come back to help the Pirates get back into Big East competition. The team captain helped Seton Hall end a three game losing streak by scoring a game-high 23 points in a win against DePaul in his first game back. While it would have been too much like right to say that Hazell led the Hall to win over Georgetown last night, no. He did have 15 points.

So what is today's lesson boys and girls? I'll let Hazell say it best: "I learned that life goes by so fast. "You can be big one day and gone the next day. So you have to cherish every moment, stay humble and stay positive. I'm in a great situation. But it could have been taken away from me if that bullet would have went one inch either way."