After Long and Troubled Journey, Seton Hall’s Jevon Thomas Set to Debut Against Rutgers

Seton Hall has already lost two players this week heading into Friday’s game with in-state rival Rutgers, but they are poised to add a third who could be a defensive difference-maker during the second half of the season.

Jevon Thomas, a 6-foot-1 junior point guard from Queens, is eligible to play in Friday’s sellout game at Prudential Center. Thomas transferred to Seton Hall from Kansas State and then sat out the first semester this season after he was involved in an altercation in February during an intramural basketball game on campus in which he allegedly choked a graduate assistant.

“It’s been a little while,” Thomas told me at Seton Hall media day in October. “I had to overcome certain things, but I’m pretty excited. I think in December I’ll be ready to go.”

Thomas’ debut comes the same week that Seton Hall announced that sophomore wing Veer Singh would transfer (Iona, Monmouth, Hofstra, St. Peter’s and Old Dominion are some of the schools that have reached out) and that the program had dismissed sophomore forward Myles Carter.

“I don’t know how many minutes I’m going to get out of him,” Pirates coach Kevin Willard said Thursday evening by phone. “It’s all going of kind to depend on how he feels and how comfortable he is being back out there. I think everyone’s expectations have to be limited a little bit because he’s jumping back in there mid-season. I think it’s going to take him a couple games to kind of get his sea legs under him a little bit.”