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Former UMass guard Derrick Gordon headed to Seton Hall for final season

Derrick Gordon

AP Photo

AP

Derrick Gordon, who began his playing career at Western Kentucky and then transferred to UMass, announced on Sunday that he’s decided to spend that year at Seton Hall where he’ll be eligible to play immediately. As a redshirt junior the 6-foot-3 Gordon averaged 9.8 points, 4.9 rebounds and 2.7 assists per game in 2014-15, making the decision to leave the program shortly thereafter.

Gordon joins former Fresno State forward Braeden Anderson as transfers who will be eligible immediately for Kevin Willard’s team, with Anderson having two seasons of eligibility remaining. Gordon can certainly help the Pirates on both ends of the floor, as Seton Hall has to account for the loss of two key perimeter contributors in Sterling Gibbs and Jaren Sina (who left the team in January).

Among the returnees on the perimeter are sophomores Isaiah Whitehead and Khadeen Carrington, and they add two more players in freshman Dalton Soffer and former Kansas State point guard Jevon Thomas (he’ll sit out this season).

Gordon, who last spring became the first openly gay athlete in Division I college basketball, joins the Seton Hall program at an interesting time for the athletic department. Friday morning Rev. Warren Hall announced via Twitter that he’d been fired as the director of the school’s campus ministry for supporting the “NOH8" campaign on his Facebook page.

The “NOH8" campaign began as a silent protest of California passing a proposition that amended that state’s constitution to ban gay marriage in 2008.

Rev. Hall also served as the team chaplain for many of Seton Hall’s, a Catholic institution, athletic teams. According to the Washington Post, it is the Archdiocese of Newark that handles decisions regarding the Director of Campus Ministry position and not Seton Hall.