Jaylen Bond
Photo by Paul Burdick
It’s why the 6-foot-7, 220-pound junior forward from Pennsylvania Class AAAA (large school) state champion Plymouth Whitemarsh (Plymouth Meeting, Pa.) decided on Pittsburgh, giving Panthers' coach Jamie Dixon a verbal commitment last Friday.
Bond chose Pitt over West Virginia and Temple.
"The main thing is Coach Dixon makes his players better and helps them go beyond college, if that’s possible," Bond said.
Dixon told Bond he could get some quality minutes his freshman year and step right in and contribute. Bond will sign his letter of intent in November and play the rest of this summer with a load off of his shoulders.
“That meant a lot to commit early,” said Bond, who averaged 18 points and 8 rebounds a game this past season for the Colonials, who won their first state title since 1997. “It feels good to get it over with and focusing in on academics. Now I can look at getting better grades and on concentrating on the SAT. I changed my mind. I wanted to commit early.
“At first, I wanted to wait for the end of the summer, but when I visited Pitt for a tournament on April 3 with my AAU team, I was supposed to meet with Coach Dixon during the weekend. I talked to each Pitt coach separately. I felt I had good connection with all of them. They all sounded sincere.”
Bond is projected to play more of a swingman role at Pitt and not power forward, a role he plays for Plymouth Whitemarsh. It will be an interesting transition for Bond, who plays exceptional defense, but will be working on extending the range of his jump shot and ballhandling over this summer.
It’s almost going to be a different world for Bond, who does play small forward for his AAU teams.
“I am used to playing away from the basket, and it’s something I obviously feel I can do, and it’s something Pitt’s coaching staff feels I can do, too,” Bond said. “I’ll be lifting on the off-season, I want to try to play at around 230, 235 next year.”
Now that the hard part is over, another tough task is ahead—defending the state championship.
“It’s a fun thing, because winning another state title will have my complete focus,” Bond said. “I liked Temple a lot, and it was hard for me to choose Pitt, because I did think about staying home and playing at Temple. I also liked West Virginia. Temple and West Virginia were close to each other. But neither of them came close to Pitt.”
Joseph Santoliquito covers high schools for the Philadelphia Daily News and is a contributor to MaxPreps.com. He can be contacted at JSantoliquito@yahoo.com.
