jacqay carlisle

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SoCalHoops Recruiting News

IEBP's Jacqay Carlyle
At Prep School in NH--(Sept. 14, 1999)

This past weekend we spent some time with the IEBP guys, including Lonnie Carlyle, one of the original IEBP coaches and the father of a former IEBP player, Jacqay Carlyle (6'-6" Grad. SG), one of the best pure shooters in last year's senior graduating class. Unbelievably, Jacqay, despite setting the Rockfish Spring League on fire on occasion with great outside shooting, was not recruited by many D-I coaches, many of whom saw him as a sort of "tweener," too tall and not quick enough for the two spot, and just a shade small for the three or four spot. . . We've heard that knock on him so many times that it's getting old, and more importantly, it's just a flat-out wrong assessment of his skills.

Like Tracy Pierson is beginning to feel about what other pundits keep saying about Travon Bryant ("he's soft, he's not big enough to play the four in college, yadayadayada, blahblahblah"), we're also getting a bit tired of hearing the same old "conventional wisdom" about Jacqay, because like Travon, he's also the kind of guy who helps his team find a way to win. With Jacqay, the IEBP team won three championships in several tournaments that we followed last year, including beating Belmont Shore twice in final games. Jacqay is the kind of player who helps his team win, gets the shots down, and quietly, almost before you know it, has scored 17, 18 or 19 points. Sneaky, dangerous and effective.

Needless to say Jacqay is the kind of talent who can help some D-I program somewhere. So in order to broaden his prospects and increase his exposure to D-I programs on the Right Coast, and rather than burn two years of NCAA eligibility by enrolling at a JUCO or trying to transfer from a smaller D-II or D-III school, Jacqay has taken the route now being taken by many graduating seniors, and he's enrolled at a prep school, Holdernes Academy, located in New Hampshire where he'll take a full post-graduate load of classes in addition to playing basketball. Holdernes is in the Class B prep league, the same division as Salisbury Prep, so he'll be playing against some of his Inland and IEBP homies, such as Avery Queen (5'-7" Sr. PG), Lawrence Carrier (6'-7" So. SG/SF), Reginald Ross (6'-8" So. PF), among others.

Jacqay had a great summer at the adidas Las Vegas Big Time with the IEBP All-Stars, where he averaged 20 ppg, and at the adidas Double Pump Best of Summer Tournament, he increased that to a 25 ppg average, including one 37 point game. Jacqay was scheduled to attend Avon Prep, but that all changed at the last minute when he decided to attend Holdernes. In addition to being an excellent offensive player, with one of the best shots we've seen, he's also an excellent student, with a legitimate 1190 SAT and 3.6 NCAA Core GPA, so you can understand why he was not going to enroll at a JC when he didn't get the D-I offers he wanted. College coaches on the East Coast who follow the Prep School circuit will definitely want to check him out since he'd be a great addition to any D-I program.