The vast majority of minutes played by Seton Hall this year have gone to transfer players, and that was mostly by design. One of those transfers has been getting maybe even more minutes than expected due to injuries: sophomore point guard and former Syracuse Orange Kadary Richmond. He's made them count.

Richmond is dealing with an injury himself, having hurt his thumb on his right (shooting) hand during the Pirates' regular season finale against Creighton and played sparringly in their Big East Tournament opening round win over Georgetown. He played closer to his regular load of minutes in their blowout loss to UConn in the subsequent game and appears mostly healthy heading into the NCAA Tournament.

But what else is there to know about Seton Hall's starting point guard?

Next man up

The job was Richmond's to open the season; he started 10 of the first 12 games. But the Pirates were, at one time, incredibly deep at the position, and Richmond's running mate was a fellow transfer (though he is in his second year at Seton Hall after playing at Harvard as an undergrad), Bryce Aiken, who was primarily coming off the bench.

Head coach Kevin Willard made a switch, however, and flipped Aiken into the starting lineup beginning with Seton Hall's road matchup with Butler (a 71-56 win). But it didn't last long: just two weeks later, against Marquette, The Patrick School graduate suffered a concussion that has kept him out the rest of the season.

With another point guard (Jahari Long) already out for the year and another (true freshman Brandon Weston) taking a medical redshirt of his own, that left Richmond and graduate student transfer Jamir Harris to hold down the point.

Since Aiken's departure, Richmond has averaged over 30 minutes a game (if you remove the game where he left after four minutes against Creighton with his injury).

More than just passing

When Aiken went out with his injury, the Pirates didn't just lose a steady hand at point guard, they also lost their leading scorer—Aiken was averaging 19.5 points per game in Big East play so far, scoring fewer than 22 points (though still in double digits) just twice.

While Richmond hasn't fully replaced that, (an unfair bar to measure by), he has sufficiently stepped up. Prior to Aiken's injury, Richmond was averaging just 6.3 points per game if you remove an outlier that we'll get to in a moment. Over the rest of the regular season, he was averaging 10.3 points per game.

And Richmond isn't a one-way player, either. He uses his long arms on his 6'6" to constantly harrass ball handlers as part of the Pirates' highly active defense, and can be switched onto almost only opposing scorer. He leads the team in steals per game at almost 2, and is active in uncountable ways as well.

About that outlier game

One of, if not the, best game of the Big East regular season was Seton Hall's 90-87 overtime win over UConn on Jan. 8. Richmond, who was coming off the bench at the time, exploded, scoring a career-high 27 points in 27 minutes, missing just three of his 13 field goal attempts and two of his eight free throws.

While those numbers on their own are impressive, how he did it was even more so: in about four minutes of game time, he scored 17 straight points, getting to the rim at will three. The only shot he missed in that stretch was a single free throw. And after a pair of free throws from Myles Cale, he went ahead and made his next two shots, too.

"I haven't been in a zone like that," said Richmond, whose previous career-high in scoring was 16. "Today was the first day I broke out and got loose, and it felt good."

Oh, and he did all of this while coming back from a vicious stomach bug that had torn through the team.

While he hasn't unleashed anything close to a scoring barrage like that since, opponents have to always be worried about it. But that scoring threat, coupled with his defensive skills, can make his Seton Hall's x-factor.

Reporting from Jerry Carino contributed to this story.

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Kadary Richmond: 3 things to know about Seton Hall's X-factor at March Madness