Jeremy Hazell wasn't taken out for being a selfish player; he was taken out for being a selfish person

Earlier this week, we touched on the fact that Seton Hall's Jeremy Hazell was benched by head coach Bobby Gonzalez in a game that Seton Hall was down only 11 with 4:06 remaining. Its also worth noting that Hazell has 32 of Seton Hall's 62 points at that juncture.

Speculation flew that the reason that Gonzo pulled Hazell was due to three consecutive terrible shots forced by the junior.

He cleared that up yesterday:

There is a lot of misinterpretation, a lot of misinformation. I'm the head coach of this program and I make those decisions—not the athletic director, not the administration, not a prep school coach, not a high school coach. I make the decisions. There's been a lot of confusion out there and I just want to make sure there is no confusion.

I didn’t take Jeremy out just because of shot selection. People think he missed some shots and I yanked him. What needs to be cleared up is Jeremy didn't run back on defense, which is basically a cardinal sin.

The other thing is you can't stand outside of the huddle and not join your teammates in the huddle. I don't want to call a guy out but I want to make it clear that the stuff he did was unacceptable. Those were the reasons why he didn't go back in the game. It has nothing to do with waving the white flag or giving up.

Going forward, I've had a meeting with Jeremy, I've talked to him about how he has to understand that given the same situation he has to handle things differently.

Seton Hall has the talent to be an NCAA Tournament team, but Gonzo has yet to find a way to get that talent to mesh well enough to win some games. Maybe now we get a little insight as to why.