Seton Hall basketball: With love and regret, JaQuan Harris turns the page
Last month, after spending two years dressed in plain clothes on the Seton Hall basketball team’s bench due to knee problems, JaQuan Harris got the news he’d been longing to hear.
“I got cleared for basketball activities,” he said. “I can do almost everything now (except contact). I’m so happy to be back.”
He won’t be back at the Hall, however. The 6-foot-3 sophomore point guard from North Brunswick has entered the transfer portal – a move that comes with mixed emotions.
“I loved being around the guys, being around Sha (head coach Shaheen Holloway), just watching him coach and watching the guards we had, who were the top in our league,” Harris said. “But I’ve been out for a while, so I need to play a lot (next season). I need to get a lot of reps.”
To get enough game reps to make up for lost time, Harris will have to transfer down.
“It wasn’t because I didn’t like Seton Hall,” he said. “I love Seton Hall. I love being here. I love the locker room, the coaches. This was a mutual agreement.”
Harris said a “cartilage issue” in his right knee is what sidelined him as a rising star St. Thomas Aquinas High School. He played in just eight games over his final two seasons there and committed to then-Hall coach Kevin Willard with the prospect of playing college ball with older brother Jamir Harris, a part-time starter in the Pirates’ backcourt.
When Willard left for Maryland, JaQuan Harris stayed the course and Holloway welcomed him aboard.
“I knew how good of a coach Sha was, and I wanted to play for Seton Hall,” he said. “I’m from New Jersey; I always wanted to stay here and play here.”
But the knee wouldn’t come around, and in January of his freshman year Harris opted to undergo surgery. During the recovery, he said, “some days I felt great and maybe two days later I didn’t feel so good. It was a lot of ups and downs.”
He got what he could out of the experience, posting a 3.3 cumulative GPA while majoring in social and behavioral sciences and studying the game, too – especially Holloway’s defensive principles.
“I learned a bunch of stuff I didn’t know before I go to college,” he said. “I was just trying to soak everything in.”
Harris credits his parents, Jamir (who is now playing in Portugal) and younger brother JeBron (a well-regarded 6-foot-4 sophomore guard with College Achieve Asbury Park) for helping him get through the toughest stretches. And he wants Seton Hall fans to know: Their well-wishes helped.
“I appreciate all the fans who were checking in on me; whenever they saw me, they always gave me positive words,” he said. “I wish I would have been able to display what I could do, but everything happens for a reason.”
One thing is certain.
“I’m going to appreciate basketball a thousand times more now,” he said.
Jerry Carino has covered the New Jersey sports scene since 1996 and the college basketball beat since 2003. He is an Associated Press Top 25 voter. Contact him at jcarino@gannettnj.com.
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Seton Hall basketball: With love and regret, JaQuan Harris turns page
