Seton Hall Guard Sterling Gibbs Denied Hardship Waiver
The NCAA has denied Sterling Gibbs, the Texas transfer bound for Seton Hall in the fall, a hardship waiver that would allow him to suit up for the Pirates immediately, according to J.P. Pelzman of The Bergen Record. The school is appealing the decision.
Gibbs saw limited action (7.5 minutes per game) as a freshman for Rick Barnes and the Longhorns last season, though Gibbs has saidhis decision is “family-related” and “involves more than basketball.” The Scotch Plains, NJ native settled on Seton Hall, as its Newark campus is just a 15-minute drive from his hometown, where a member of his family is coping with an illness.
Gibbs is the all-time leading scorer at Seton Hall Prep (N.J.), which over the years has served as a pipeline of talent to Seton Hall University. He earned First Team All-State honors during his senior season.
Jamar Nutter, who graduated from Seton Hall Prep in 2003, was the last Prep alum to stay in-state and play for Seton Hall University too. Nutter was a member of the 2005-06 Pirates, the last Seton Hall basketball team to make the NCAA tournament. He was also a redshirt freshman during the 2003-04 season, when the Pirates last won an NCAA tournament game, defeating Arizona in the round of 64.
A 6-foot-1, 185-pound point guard, Gibbs found himself buried on a Texas roster loaded with talented youth at the guard position. Even in light of the early departure of gun-slinging combo guard J’Covan Brown, Gibbs still had to contend with prized recruit and rival point guard Myck Kabongo, Sheldon McClellan (the team’s second leading scorer last season) and Julien Lewis. All three returning players, like Gibbs, are rising sophomores.
Given the logjam in the backcourt, and no signs of that depth thinning out anytime soon—Kabongo’s NBA draft stock took a major hit after a disappointing freshman campaign— proximity to family likely wasn’t the only motive driving Gibbs out of Austin. And because of this ambiguity, the NCAA chose not to grant Gibbs a hardship waiver.
The NCAA in recent years has been more lenient in handing out hardship waivers, which are usually hard to come by. Arizona transfer Momo Jones was granted a waiver to play at Iona this past season because of family medical reasons, and Elliot Williams (transferred from Duke to Memphis) received one in 2009 so that he could be closer to his ailing mother. Most recently, the NCAA awarded Wake Forrest transfer Tony Chennault a hardship waiver in June to play at Villanova next season. Chennault had been dealing with family problems himself.
In high school, Gibbs had originally committed to Maryland. The sudden retirement of longtime Terrapin head coach Gary Williams, however, prompted Gibbs to de-commit. The stat-sheet-stuffing floor general ended up choosing Texas instead. Now, perhaps for more reasons than one, Gibbs is taking his game to Seton Hall, where he’ll be leaned on in 2013-14 to run the offense.
If the NCAA’s rejection of his hardship waiver is upheld, Gibbs will have to sit out the 2012-13 season in compliance with NCAA rules. That would force the Pirates to turn to rising sophomore Freddie Wilson in the meantime.
Wilson will have to fill big shoes left by departing senior Jordan Theodore. Theodore last season broke Seton Hall’s single-season assists record—notching 225 as a senior—which had stood for the previous 49 years.