Lewis commits to Mocs

James Lewis Jr. needed to experience life a little bit outside of North Carolina.

He spent his last season of high school basketball at Northside Christian Academy in Charlotte before deciding to attend Phillips Academy, a school in Andover, Md., that offered him a postgraduate year.

In the end, he got what he wanted.

The 6-foot-8 forward committed to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men’s basketball program Friday evening, choosing the Mocs over offers from South Carolina-Upstate, Colgate and Kennesaw State.

He averaged 18 points and 11 rebounds a game in that extra school year and said it “helped me a lot.”

“I’ve learned how to live away from home,” Lewis said Friday evening. “Andover also forced me to break out of my shell and interact with others. On the basketball half of it Andover helped me get stronger and faster than the year before.”

He played his first three seasons of high school ball at Gaston Day School in Gastonia, N.C., averaging 11.4 points, 10.3 rebounds and two blocks per game before transferring to Northside. There he averaged 16 points and 12 rebounds per game and had early offers from Radford, Winthrop and UNC Asheville before deciding on the extra year of school.

He said UTC provided him “everything I wanted in a college.”

“They have a coaching staff that believes in me, a school that was not too close to home but also not too far, and a place where I can receive a good education,” he said.

“I knew I could not pass up that opportunity.”

Lewis becomes new UTC coach Lamont Paris’s second commitment for the 2017-18 season, joining 6-4 guard Jonathan Bryant. They join 6-7 combo forward Joan Duran, a junior college transfer and the lone holdover from former coach Matt McCall’s recruiting class, in giving UTC nine scholarship players and junior walkon Dylan Brewster on the roster.

The Mocs had two other players on campus this weekend: 6-9 center Justin Brown from Chicago and 6-6 guard-forward and graduate transfer Qiydar Davis from Louisiana Tech.