Jordan Rawls Recruiting Update (2019)
Chattanooga was already a sneaky hotbed of basketball talent. Now, with Hamilton Heights Christian Academy (HHCA) recruiting African and Canadian players to the metro area the talent pool is filling up fast with more quality players, many of them imported to the beautiful town.
Jordan Rawls is not one of them…one of the imported quality players that is. He is a homegrown talent surrounded by the best international projects Hamilton Heights Christian Head Coach Zach Ferrell can find.
“I love Jordan especially around other good players,” said Coach Ferrell. “I think he’s just scratching his potential.”
The Control
Coach Ferrell ascended to HHCA Head Coach in 2013. Since then he quickly built a national player in the prep ranks.
HHCA Graduates like Therren Shelton-Szmidt (Middle Tennessee), Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (Kentucky), and Nickeil Alexander-Walker (Virginia Tech) are all two months away from shocking the exclusively-college basketball fans with their immediate impacts.
Shai will challenge for minutes on a national title contender in Kentucky. Alexander-Walker will provide the foundation for Buzz Williams’ massive rebuilding project at Virginia Tech. In fact, he might be the player that nudges them into the top tier of a loaded ACC race. Louisville surely could be a team they pass. Wow, is that program under upheaval in the recent days?
Last year Coach Ferrell graciously admitted the trio jumpstarted his basketball experiment at HHCA, instantly giving the program the talent it needed to compete against the Oak Hills Academy, Huntington Preps of the world.
As he grew as a coach, they grew as players. Quietly, so too did Jordan Rawls.
If Hamilton Heights and Coach Ferrell never existed would Jordan be as refined and powerful as he is now? Probably not. You see, the entire program is built around developing elite college/pro basketball players. The level of weight training, fitness work, and basketball instruction far exceeds that of most public schools statewide. The team just has more resources and more investment than the traditional public school.
Any young player competing against, and chasing stars like Shai Alexander, Nickeil every day in practice will improve if they embrace the challenge.
Jordan not only embraced it he immersed himself in the training and devoted himself to the craft. Such a focused teenager, Rawls had to make sacrificies. He couldn’t spend entire weekends at the movies or drinking with friends. He was on the road playing in mostly sparsely attended contests against other ambitious prep school players.
High school basketball prep programs are not as glamorous as their social media profiles insist. Players like Jordan bust their ass daily just to have a chance at minutes. And since they don’t play many home games they don’t really have fans in the genuine, high school way.
Jordan Rawls had to improve. The stakes were too high and the teammates were too good to coast against.
Now college coaches are noticing.
“Definitely a MM D1,” said Head Coach Ferrell. “Several of the MM schools that were here Wednesday thought he would end up higher than them.”
This summer Rawls drew interest from an assortment of top programs.
“But from the summer I had Louisville,” said Rawls. “Vanderbilt. Wofford . Hofstra and more schools.”
Already Jordan visited Middle Tennessee, Vanderbilt, Virginia Tech, and Tennessee.
Tomorrow Rawls will trek back up I-75 to Knoxville.
“I’m taking an unofficial to Tennessee,” said Rawls Friday morning.
The Volunteers netted a 2019 verbal from Davonte Gaines. Following a tiny Class of 2018 (UT has a single senior) to campus the 2019 group will be large.
Expect Head Coach Rick Barnes to take four players, maybe more in replenishing the ranks. Though he will have plenty of other options a hypothetical Tennessee landing spot would certainly suit Rawls’ game. He fits into that SEC system well.
Just this month the 6-foot-3 guard turned heads from Tennessee, James Madison, Austin Peay, and UNC-Asheville coaches. They all expressed interest.
The test case and Coach Ferrell’s basketball experiment is working. Jordan Rawls is now a surefire D1 prospect.