Brown made most of an abbreviated season
NEWTOWN SQUARE – When Haverford School hit the court for its first game of the delayed 2021 season, there was no shortage of excitement.
But of all the Fords who waited so long for basketball to return, no one felt the same anticipation as Jameel Brown.
“My mind was going 100 miles per hours,” Brown said Saturday, after spearheading a
57-49 win over Episcopal Academy in the finale of an abbreviated season. “But it was definitely a sigh of relief that I went through those trials and tribulations to be back playing again.”
Brown was a promising freshman role player on the Fords’ Inter-Ac championship team of 2019. He figured to have a breakout sophomore campaign, off the heels of a stellar summer on the AAU circuit that inspired a flood of Power 5 offers.
But a wrist fracture on Dec. 8, 2019 brought that to an end. By the time he was healed in the spring of 2020, everything around him had gone on hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Gone was a summer of AAU competition, the usual fall ball schedule, all of it beyond pickup games and individual workouts. Which left Brown and his precocious talent, at one of the most critical junctures of a young basketball player’s career, without a proper game of basketball for 14 months.
“I had a lot of time on my hands to think and look at the game in a different way from the bench,” Brown said. “You see many different things from the bench than you do form the court. So it definitely was a blessing and a curse.”
Brown has made the time work for him. He’s added muscle to a stringy underclassmen frame, standing a solid 6-4 and 190 pounds. He’s worked on his flexibility and leaping ability, growing stronger and faster via individual workouts. He improved his vision of the game from the vantage point of the bench, frustrating as that was.
His game has unquestionably expanded, the combo guard able to affect the game on and off the ball. Saturday’s outing against Episcopal – 10 points, eight rebounds, five assists, four steals – showed his immense influence even if he’s not hoisting up shots. The Fords enjoyed a 21-0 edge in the third quarter to pull away from the Churchmen without Brown attempting a shot, instead working for his teammates and facilitating a deadly halfcourt offense.
Brown can’t make up for lost time, but he’s making the most of what he’s given. He averaged 17 points in the four games he played as a sophomore. Haverford was 3-1 when he went down; the Fords finished 9-18, with 10 of the losses by singledigits.
This year, he supplied 21.7 points in nine outings as Haverford posted a 7-2 record. His average was north of 23 points per game before Saturday’s deferential outing.
For all of his personal growth, he still approached the start of the open recruiting period for the class of 2022 with trepidation. Would schools that hadn’t seen him in nearly a year forget about him? A phone call from a recruiter minutes after the period opened, before Brown had even gotten out of bed for the day, assuaged those fears.
The interest led to a commitment to Purdue last month. The Boilermakers’ coaching staff thrives on heady guards with arsenals of skills like Brown’s. Brown formed a bond with the coaching staff, and he’s attracted to getting to play in one of the nation’s top leagues: The Big Ten has three of the top five teams in the Associated Press top 25 and four of the top 10. Purdue returned to the AP poll this week in 23rd, the sixth Big Ten team in the rankings.
As Brown went through the receiving line to bid farewell to Haverford School’s six seniors, as is a program tradition at the end of the season, the moment presented a choice. Players could either lament that a season that normally stretches across four months and 30 games was limited to four weeks and nine contests. Or they could opt for gratitude at the chances they got.
With all that Brown has been through, his decision was clear, as obvious as the smile creeping out from behind the edges of his mask.
“I’m just thankful that we can be able to play,” he said. “There are some schools that are not able to play, so just being able to play is a blessing. We all want a long season, but we’re just grateful for what we have.”