City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
--

Even before Jaekwon Carlyle headed down to visit Hampton University, he had a pretty good feeling how the day would end.

“I knew I was going to commit to Hampton,” he said.

Why so sure? Well, in addition to several other reasons, the first school to offer the Imhotep Charter senior guard had become a parental favorite.

Carlyle’s mother, Tynisa Lugo, had done her own research on the four schools to offer her son. And while this was clearly Carlyle’s decision to make, it doesn’t hurt to have mom’s approval.

“She kept telling me it was a good school,” Carlyle said, “and if I should pick any of the four schools I’ve got, it should be there--so I kept that in mind.”

And at the end of his unofficial visit to the Hampton, Va., school, Carlyle did indeed end his college recruitment, committing to head coach Ed Joyner and becoming part of the Pirates’ 2016 class.

Joyner was the first coach to offer Carlyle, doing so in July after watching him in the spring and summer with Philly Pride on the AAU circuit. Canisius followed suit on the same day, with Maine and Morgan State coming on by the end of the month.

Carlyle's primary recruiter was associated head coach Darryl Sharp, a Kennett Square (Pa.) native and 1990 Bloomsburg graduate who's been on Joyner's staff now entering seven years.

"We wanted to give a shoutout to Coach Sharp from Hampton," said Imhotep coach Andre Noble, who was with Carlyle on his visit.. "He really spotted 'Kwon throughout the AAU season and followed them throughout.”

Although it took until his final AAU season for the Division I offers to come, Carlyle had been on the Division I recruiting radar for a while. The 6-foot-tall point guard is deceptively athletic and a good outside shooter, and though he’s more of a scoring guard he’s got the ability to be a distributor and is used to playing alongside talented teammates.

“We’ve always felt like the talent was there in (Jaekwon) and we felt like last year he really like made some huge contributions for us to win the Public League last year,” Noble said. “He had a great AAU season with Philly Pride and we never really felt like talent-wise, 'Kwon wasn’t one of the better ones in his class.”

Hampton, a school of around 5,000 undergraduates, is one of several Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC), whose championship trophy the Pirates captured last year to make the NCAA Tournament for the second time in the last five years.

In his six years as head coach, Joyner has amassed a 99-96 (.508) record.

Expectations are high for the Pirates yet again this year, with seven seniors on the roster, and that means plenty of available minutes for Carlyle next fall.

“They said I could be one of the players that can play right away,” Carlyle said. “They’ve got seven seniors leaving, two senior guards, so I think I could come and make an impact from the start.”

As a junior at Imhotep, Carlyle averaged 7.4 ppg, fifth-best on a Panthers squad that went 22-10, winning the Public League championship and advancing to the PIAA Class AAA semifinals before losing to Neumann-Goretti. But he averaged 10 ppg over the final 11 contests of the season, including a 17-point game against Delaware Valley that shows he's capable of carrying the offense in a few games as a senior.

Alongside fellow guards like junior Daron Russell and sophomore Bernard Lightsey, plus wing Jaquan Arrington and others, Carlyle has plenty of help to shoulder the scoring load for the Panthers this year.

“I expect for us to have the best backcourt in our area, that’s what my expectations are," Noble said. "If they’re playing to their capability, that’s what we should have.”