A New Chapter: Jatrious Smith to Canada
Jatrious Smith Jatrious Smith jumped onto the national radar after videos of his athletic ability turned into thousands of hits on YouTube. The 6-foot-5 shooting guard born and bred in Fayetteville, North Carolina transferred back and forth between Fayetteville’s E.E.…
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Continue ReadingJatrious Smith jumped onto the national radar after videos of his athletic ability turned into thousands of hits on YouTube. The 6-foot-5 shooting guard born and bred in Fayetteville, North Carolina transferred back and forth between Fayetteville’s E.E. Smith High School, Raleigh’s Word of God Christian Academy and Pebblebrook High School in Georgia before eventually returning back to E.E. Smith High School for his senior season. He informed me earlier this month that he would not be eligible until after Christmas, in part by his transferring from Georgia and class hours not being able to transfer.
Smith is the #1 ranked player in the PrepHoopsNC 2017 class and informed me earlier today that he will move to Canada to play and train under former NBA player and head coach Butch Carter. Carter was a standout at Middleton High School in Ohio before going to play at Indiana University and the NBA for six years. He was the head coach of the Toronto Raptors in the late 1990’s. Carter has recently began the process of building The Canadian Basketball League. This league will have (at the time of this article) nine teams playing their games in college and university gyms until the league grows. The NBL of Canada recently defaulted on April 30th but Carter believes his “CBL” will make it through the tough times of the first year.
“Being able to get coached by one of the best coaches, that coached Tracy McGrady and Vince Carter, etc. I wanted to take that risk and get help to have a better chance of making it somewhere in life”, Smith said. Jatrious is a exceptional athlete, has great shooting range and can jump out of the gym. He was ranked as high as the 25th best shooting guard in the country according to Scout.com earlier this year.
Smith verbally committed to Andy Kennedy and Ole Miss in January 2016 and de-committed over the summer.