City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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With a trio of Division I offers on the table, Archbishop Ryan's Izaiah Brockington focused on one key factor.

“It came down to where would I be the most successful," he said. "In what system would I thrive? What coaching staff would really ride with me through freshmen mistakes? Who really cares (about me) as a person, just even on a personal level, just about me and what I do after basketball, or after college."

And ultimately, as he announced Saturday evening on Twitter, that place would be at New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Brockington is the second commitment for new NJIT head coach Brian Kennedy and staff this weekened, joining Emmaus (Pa.) point guard David Kachelries, who popped for the Highlanders on Friday. He and Brockington join Lawrenceville (Ga.) point guard Zach Cooks in the program's incoming 2017 class.

Brockington gave a lot of credit to assistant coach Kim Waiters, entering his second year at the program after previously running The Hoop Group's camps.

"Coach Waiters did an amazing job recruiting me," Brockington told CoBL via text. "Daily calls, texts, everything. In the time he recruited me, I really feel like we developed a personal connection."

A 6-foot-4, 175-pound guard, Brockington averaged 14.2 ppg for the Raiders as a junior, leading Ryan to a 16-9 record and just one win shy of a berth of a state playoff berth, a six-win increase from the year before.

He's looking forward to playing with Kachelries, a 6-2 point guard with a scorer's touch and a chip on his shoulder.

"He’s a really tough point guard, he knows how to control the tempo of the game, he knows how to take shots, when not to take shots," Brockington said. "That just made me more excited to play with him.”

The left-hander picked up his first two Division I offers in April, with NJIT followed a day later by Coppin State, and added to that a Holy Cross scholarship just last week.

But he'll instead head to Newark, N.J. to begin his college career, joining a program that was the laughingstock of Division I hoops only eight years ago but is now one of its fastest-rising members.

"I do remember when they weren't in a conference, early in my recruitment they weren't in a conference and that made me really cautious," he said. "That made me wonder, how do they get into the tournament?"

Now, there's a clear path ahead to March Madness.

With 20-win seasons each of the last two years, a new membership in the Atlantic Sun Conference and a new on-campus arena due to open just in time for his arrival at campus, NJIT is peaking at the perfect time for Brockington.

"They might need a whole section just for my family," Brockington joked. "I think (the gym) really symbolized the general upswing off the university as a whole, and the fact that it'll be finished right as I get there is just a plus."

As a senior at Ryan, Brockington will be relied upon heavily -- along with classmate Matiss Kulackovskis -- to lead the squad under second-year head coach Joe Zeglinski following the graduation of three starters off last year's team.