McCreary 'Could See Himself' At USF

Kristie Gordon and her son, three-star forward Jalyn McCreary, have only been hearing from the South Florida coaching staff for a few months, so it was an eye opening experience for her and her family when they came to Tampa for an official visit. We spoke to Gordon shortly after she returned home from Florida to get her thoughts on the visit and where things stand with her son and USF.

“I think he was surprised at how much he did like it and how much he enjoyed the players,” Gordon said. “I don’t think he expected to enjoy it that much, but he was all the way in, but he is not a hasty decision maker either. So it’s interesting to see his thought process.”

McCreary is spending his senior year of high school at Legacy Charter (Greenville, SC) so he and his family (mom, stepdad and younger brother) arrived at different times on Friday.

“He flew in earlier and they took him out to lunch and gave him a tour,” Gordon said. “They had several of the players join them so he got acclimated with them and he hung out with them Friday night. We flew in Friday evening. Saturday morning we went downstairs to have breakfast and all the coaches came over along with the athletic director. From there we left and went straight to the facilities to tour them and look at things. We went to every part in there then Jalyn met the trainer and we were able to chat with him about how he works with the players, the meal plan and putting weight on them.”

The family toured the campus on golf carts with the coaches and saw where the players live as well as all of the new things that have been built on campus, they also met with Ashley Grigsby who is the Assistant Director of basketball academics at USF.

“She filled us in on how she does things and that she’s a former student,” said Gordon. “We got to meet with one of her staff members and she said there is another one coming aboard that they recently hired. She talked about that she travels with the students, I liked that, and just teaches them how to manage and study skills and different things that they should do.”

Saturday, Gordon said a different group of players joined them for lunch.

“Which was nice,” she said. “They kid of rotated the team so that he (Jalyn) could get to know almost everybody.

Gordon said that she could tell that her son was already bonding with the players on the team.

“Jalyn is not an easy shell to crack but he was definitely enjoying his time with the fellas,” Gordon said.

The visit ended with a catered breakfast at Coach Gregory’s home with his family.

“It was nice, Gordon said. “We got to see his house, learn more about him, meet his family and meet his girls. He spoke to us about where they are in the recruiting process and were just trying to feel us out about where we are and whether or not Jalyn was going to possibly take some more officials anytime soon.”

McCreary is set to take a visit to Georgia State September 22 “or somewhere around that time,” said Gordon.

“He’s not scheduled to go on any others officially but there have been other schools asking us if he would be willing to take a visit. He really likes USF and he really could see himself being there but he’s not ready to commit because he doesn’t know yet. This is the first official. My husband said it really well to Coach Dixon ‘we know that you are great but we don’t have anything else to compare it to either so it would at least be good to go on at least one more (visit).’

WHAT’S NEXT?

Barring a surprise, we expect McCreary to take at least one more official visit, for comparison sake, before making his school choice. In the meantime, B.J. Mack, another forward is scheduled to start an official visit to USF this Friday.

RTB REACTION

As the old recruiting philosophy says, the most important person to win over is the player's mother. It sounds like the Bulls did a good job of doing that. With Mayan Kiir sitting out his transfer season, we only expect USF to take one forward in the 2019 class. We believe that McCreary is a take if he wants to run with the bulls.

As always, we'll keep you posted ...