“Everything has to line up perfectly to get something like this done, and that requires some fortune and some luck and three parties — a coach, a player and his future coach — who are on the same page,” said Dave Telep, ESPN.com’s senior national basketball recruiting analyst. “That’s just not going to happen a lot of times.”
Jones will sit on Virginia’s bench, but not in uniform, Tuesday when the Cavaliers (17-3, 4-2 ACC) host Clemson (11-9, 3-3). He is the first Virginia recruit to enroll in the middle of an academic year since at least 1983-84, according to a team spokesman, and he is the first player to join the men’s basketball team from outside the university in the middle of a season since Tom Calloway transferred into the program in the spring 1984.
Although Jones is eligible to play immediately, Virginia will hold him out of competition until next season, at which point he’ll have four years of eligibility. For now, he is practicing — but not traveling — with the team.
Ed Huckaby, his coach at Fishburne Military School in Waynesboro, Va., approached Virginia about the possibility of Jones enrolling early at the university.
“You get a lot of prep school coaches who, for selfish reasons, don’t want their guys to leave because they’re really sucked into, ‘I’ve got to win this many games during the year,’ ” said Huckaby, who formerly was an assistant at Wright State. “I want to win, but to me, it’s not a big deal if there are opportunities for guys. We’re in this so that guys can move on to the next level and go to college.”
Recruits enrolling in college a semester early can follow two paths, and neither likely will become a trend. Some players move up their high school graduation dates to December, and others attend postgraduate programs such as Fishburne — typically because they have yet to fulfill the necessary academic requirements to qualify under NCAA guidelines — and depart once they qualify academically.
For many high school seniors, the idea of leaving their prep teams mid-year does not hold much appeal because it would mean missing out on the postseason. Specifically in the D.C. metro area, many of the top high school players compete at private schools that do not allow early graduation.
Several college coaches said they wouldn’t want the distraction of integrating a new player into the program just as conference play is getting underway. Perhaps more significantly, they are typically reticent about plucking players midseason from high school coaches with whom they wish to maintain relationships.
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