MOREHEAD CITY — Jaxon Ellingsworth will play his college ball at East Carolina, which comes as quite a surprise to him.
The recent West Carteret graduate didn’t have the Pirates on his radar after back-to-back standout seasons on the basketball court.
“It was kind of a last-minute decision,” he said of accepting a preferred walk-on spot. “I was going to play at a junior college.”
He added that the ability to play close to home at a Division I school and have family and friends in the stands often to watch him play was a selling point.
The 6-9, 205-pound center appeared headed to Brunswick Community College after a number of programs – VMI, Gardner-Webb, USC Upstate – recruited him before pursuing players from the transfer portal.
“I didn’t think that was a bad decision at all,” Ellingsworth said of attending BCC. “I had a couple of other schools I was looking at, or I could have reclassed and taken a post-grad year.”
The portal and the coronavirus pandemic have radically changed the college recruiting landscape, creating a strange scene for high school graduates.
“I compare it to a cakewalk,” West Carteret coach Mark Mansfield said. “You start taking chairs out, and everyone starts scrambling for chairs, and it whittles its way down. So much comes down to the last second now.”
The portal certainly impacted ECU this offseason with six players from the purple and gold entering it. Add those lost to graduation, and the program saw its top six scorers leave the team.
Ellingsworth proved an attractive recruit for the program after putting up outstanding seasons as a junior and senior.
He averaged 21.9 points, 10.4 rebounds and 1.7 blocks while leading West to a school-record 26 wins, a Coastal Conference championship and a trip to the 3A east regional final.
As a junior, he averaged 21.1 points, 10.1 rebounds and 2.1 blocks while leading the Patriots to their first regional final in 36 years.
“He has potential,” Mansfield said. “Clemson inquired about him early on before taking a portal player, so that shows you what level he’s at. He’s 6-9, and he shot 34% from the three-point line this past season. He’s a great stretch-4. And Jaxon is a beast on the inside. There were several games where he had six or seven dunks.”
Ellingsworth continued to shoot efficiently this past season, hitting 62% from the floor after going for 65% as a junior.
He added the three-point shot as a senior, connecting on 22-of-64 (34%) after attempting just four shots from beyond the arc in the previous season.
Throw in a coaching change, and ECU was looking for some players late in the process. Michael Schwartz was tabbed as the 24th head coach in program history in mid-March.
Considered one of the most versatile and well-rounded assistant coaches in college basketball, Schwartz has spent the last seven seasons on Rick Barnes’ staff at the University of Tennessee – including four as the associate head coach.
In the fall of 2019, Schwartz earned feature placement on The Athletic's list of the nation’s top-25 up-and-coming college basketball coaches.
“I really love the coaching staff,” Ellingsworth said. “They are all new, so it’s starting something fresh. He’s pretty confident he can turn it around. He says we are going to win games.”
Schwartz will have his work cut out for him in Greenville. In 57 years, the Pirates have finished .500 or better just 18 times and only five times since 2000. They haven’t finished above .500 since 2013 when Jeff Lebo led the team to a CIT championship.
East Carolina has qualified for the NCAA Tournament just twice in its history and not since 1993.
Basketball players report in early June for summer workouts, adding to the sense of urgency for Ellingsworth to make a decision as soon as possible. He arrived on June 12 and started workouts the following week, providing a wakeup call to newcomers.
“Coach says he wants us to be the best-conditioned team in the country,” Ellingsworth said. “For sure I’m going to be running a lot.”
The N.C. Coaches Association East-West All-Star said the first workouts provided some insight on what would be expected of him at the Division I level.
“I really just have to work hard,” he said. “It’s nowhere near what it was in high school. I don’t think anybody is prepared for this. College is a whole different level.”
(0) comments
Welcome to the discussion.
Log In
As a privately owned web site, we reserve the right to edit or remove comments that contain spam, advertising, vulgarity, threats of violence, racism, anti-Semitism, or personal/abusive/condescending attacks on other users or goading them. The same applies to trolling, the use of multiple aliases, or just generally being a jerk. Enforcement of this policy is at the sole discretion of the site administrators and repeat offenders may be blocked or permanently banned without warning.