Joe Serra of The (Greensboro) News and Record
GREENSBORO, NC – Jaydon Young has been playing high school basketball all summer, and now that the rising senior at Greensboro Day School knows where he’ll be playing in college, he can enjoy the game a little more.
Young announced Friday evening that he plans to play at Virginia Tech, which won the ACC Tournament championship earlier this year.
He said he chose junior hockey “because they’ve been recruiting me since my sophomore year.” I got to learn a lot about them and they took the time to learn about me and my family. It just felt right to me. The system is very similar to GDS and it won’t be that difficult a transition for me.
A 6-foot-4, 195-pound guard, Young plays a physical style that allows him to get into the paint and score, but he can also hit from 3-point range. As a junior, he averaged 12.5 points, 6.5 rebounds and 3.8 assists per game for a balanced Greensboro Day team that went 32-4 and reached the North Carolina Independent Schools Athletic Association Class 4A championship game. He was named the Greensboro News & Record/Winston Salem Journal NCISAA/Charter Schools Player of the Year.
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A three-star recruit by 247Sports, Young was ranked the No. 11 player in North Carolina and the No. 37 shooting guard in the nation by that website. He also had scholarship offers from Texas A&M, Appalachian State, Charlotte, Elon, North Carolina A&T, UNC Greensboro and Western Carolina, among others.
“Virginia Tech is a good academic fit for him and good basketball for him,” Greensboro Day coach Freddie Johnson said. “[Hokies head coach] Mike Young is first class.
Jayden Young spent the summer playing for Greensboro Day competing in some team events and the prestigious Nike EYBL circuit for Chris Pauls Team CP3. Now joining Etowah (Ga.) point guard Brandon Rechtsteiner as the second member of the Hokies’ 2022-2023 recruiting class, Young can breathe a sigh of relief.
“I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders,” he said. “I feel like I can go out and play, be myself and not have to worry about people in the crowd watching me and feeling like I have to hit every shot. I can just go out and play and everything will be fun now.”
But that doesn’t mean Young will slow down. That’s not him, and it’s not the kind of program Johnson built in Greensboro Day.
“You’re getting a complete basketball player who can do whatever he’s asked to do,” said Johnson, the winningest coach in North Carolina high school basketball history. “He’s played so many roles for us since he was a freshman at day school.”
The role he expects the Virginia Tech junior to play is “like a combo guard with the ball in my hands and playing off the ball.” I take the challenge of guarding the best players in high school and plan to do the same in college.
Before heading to Blacksburg, the young man said, “Hurry up a little.” Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up They want to make sure they catch the ball. I also want to keep my shots in tune and keep working to get to the basket. I want everything to be tight when I get there.
