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Instead, Herb Pope was busy taking classes and preparing for the official start of the 2009-10 basketball season at Seton Hall.

"It's been 11 weeks since the last time I went home. I don't go home too much," said Pope, a 6-foot-8, 236-pound junior power forward who sat out last season after transferring from New Mexico State.

Pope was shot four times in his hometown on March 31, 2007, and as part of an effort to limit contact with the nefarious influences in his life, he doesn't return home as much as he would like.

When he does, he spends time primarily with family.

"I don't keep the same company that I once kept before," he said. "I stay around guys that have something going [on], college kids, adults that went to college and work 9-5 jobs. I pretty much keep a close-knit circle. I count all my guys that I hang out with on one hand with four fingers to spare."

Charles Smith, the former Knicks forward now taking classes toward his Masters in management at Seton Hall, has become a mentor for Pope. Smith, who played college ball at Pittsburgh, has known Pope since he was in high school.

"He called me recently and said he has a little daughter and he was going to miss her birthday," Smith recalled. "I told him, 'This is a part of being a professional athlete, part of being a college athlete, part of having a child at a young age. You still have to grow up and you still have to take care of yourself.'"

There is no doubting Pope's talent on the basketball court.

During his senior season at Aliquippa High, he averaged 19.7 points, 11 rebounds and 3.9 assists and led the team to the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League Class AA championship.

The following spring, Pope was shot four times after an argument broke out at a party. Two bullets hit Pope and remained lodged in his body. After covering his face with his left forearm, a third bullet hit Pope in the arm. He ultimately fled down a 20-foot embankment and hitched a ride to a hospital.

"When I got shot, that was rock bottom," Pope recalled. "I made the wrong decision to go out late, whether or not I started it. I felt like it was somebody else's fault for the longest [time]. Now that I look back it was my bad choice of going out that night.

"Only one of two things can happen. I learned my lesson."

Pope said that as a result of the shooting, he learned a great deal about who his real friends were.

"When you hit rock bottom you find out who's really there for you," he said. "And the people that I was hanging with [weren't] really here for you. And some of my family members [weren't] there."

Pope was abandoned by his own parents and raised in foster homes and by his aunt, Amy Pope-Smith.

His father, Herbert Pope, has been in and out of prison for drugs and stealing and Herb's mother, Juanita Raines, also has a history of arrests related to trespassing, theft and writing bad checks.

As a result, Pope values the family members he does have.

"There's nothing like family," Amy said. "Herb is a very family-oriented child even though his father and mother were never there for him. He wants family."

Now, on the advice of people like Smith and Seton Hall head coach Bobby Gonzalez, Pope focuses more on life at Seton Hall and what an education can do for him and his daughter.

"We told him, 'We know you love your brothers and sisters in the foster home and you want to go back to Aliquippa and see all your boys, but you've got to make a commitment,'" Gonzalez said. "'You can't just run back every time there's holidays and weekends. You've got to focus; your life's got to be up here.'"

Gonzalez added: "We got him to understand that you just need to sacrifice and stay focused and you can really do something with your life here. You've got a girl, you've got a baby, but you can help them if you do the right thing and he's bought into that."

Added Amy Pope-Smith: "He has to focus on his school. That's his main goal. He can't help his daughter if he can't help himself."

Hamari remains with her mother in Aliquippa, but Pope still spends time with his daughter at Seton Hall. She had to return home for her birthday in order to get flu shots.

"[Hamari] goes up there during the basketball season. She's wherever her father is," Amy said.

Boosted by the additions of transfers Pope, Keon Lawrence (Missouri) and Jeff Robinson (Memphis), as well as 6-11 big man Melvyn Oliver, junior college shooting guard Jamel Jackson and freshman forward Ferrakohn Hall, Seton Hall could make a major move in the Big East after finishing 17-15 overall and 7-11 in the Big East.

"Now we can add six more new guys and so I just think the sky's the limit for us," Pope said.

When Seton Hall tips its season on Oct. 30 with an exhibition against Carleton University, Amy said she plans to be there with her husband, Ronald, and other family members, including Hamari and Hamari's mother.

And on that day Herb Pope will look up into the stands and see the family that has stood by him through thick and thin, and the beginning of the rest of his life.