His cousin played in the NBA. Now UNC basketball, others are recruiting this Gaston Christian guard
Chapel Fowler The Fayetteville Observer
GASTONIA – Midway through Tuesday’s home game, with Gaston Christian struggling to find an identity against Hickory Grove Christian, Gabe Blair approached star sophomore Jahseem Felton with a question.
“Do you want to bring the ball up and run the 1?”
Minutes later, game script dictated another request from coach to player.
“Hey, I need you to post up against their 5 man.”
In a display of the versatility that’s made him one of North Carolina’s most coveted 2024 basketball recruits, Felton passed both tests with flying colors. He went from two points at halftime to a season-high 28 by game’s end, his bevy of low-post twists and sharp passes and and-ones fueling a 66-54 win.
That’s the luxury of having a 6-foot-5, 190-pound “big guard” and certified Power Five recruit on your roster, ready for immediate deployment at point guard or center or wherever else his team needs him.
“He’s just such a unique talent,” Blair said.
Felton sank 10 of his 13 two-point attempts and 11 of 17 overall on Tuesday, adding 10 rebounds, three assists and three steals. In 14 games for Gaston Christian, he has averaged 14.6 points, 4.6 rebounds and 1.8 assists per game while shooting 50% from the field, 30% on 3-pointers and 72% on free throws.
As for his recruitment: it’s unsurprisingly heating up. Felton’s scholarship offers include Georgetown, Florida, Kansas, Ole Miss, South Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina and Wake Forest. Felton visited the
Gamecocks and
Demon Deacons last fall, and Virginia coaches stopped by an Eagles practice last week.
Two prominent in-state programs have also entered the picture, as Felton told the USA TODAY Network that UNC and N.C. State have reached out to express interest. The general message from Hubert Davis and Kevin Keatts’ coaching staffs: “Just letting me know that they know where I’m at and they see me.”
As a 16-year-old, Felton can’t be directly contacted by Division I programs right now – that’s not allowed until the June 15 after a recruit’s sophomore year, per NCAA rules – so communication goes through Blair. But according to Felton, college coaches are mostly impressed by the same thing: his versatility.
“But I’ve just got to keep working,” Felton said. “They said there’s a lot of people they recruit at a young age who go downhill when they get to college. So they’re just telling me to keep working, stay right in school, trust my coaches and trust my parents … really, just stay good and they’ll keep looking for me.”
It’s quite the measured perspective for a high school sophomore, and Felton, a cousin of former UNC and NBA guard Raymond Felton and former UNC guard Jalek Felton, has been developing it for years.
National recruiting services dubbed him one of the top players in his class dating back to sixth grade, and one website labeled him the
No. 1 eighth grader in the nation two years ago. Back then, in 2020, he was a 6-4 14-year-old with braces playing up (and dunking) for Westminster Catawba Christian’s varsity team.
Felton averaged 12.8 points, 3.5 rebounds and 2.4 assists per game that year for the prep school in Rock Hill, South Carolina, before attending Charlotte’s Northside Christian Academy for his freshman season. A mix of friends at the school, coaching and academics prompted him to transfer to Gaston Christian last July.
As did the Eagles’ standing in a crowded North Carolina private school hoops scene. Gaston Christian isn’t as synonymous with NCISAA basketball as, say, Greensboro Day School; even within its own metro, the Cannon Schools, Charlotte Christians, Charlotte Latins and Providence Days of the world loom large.
Though the Eagles turned some heads with a run to last spring’s 3A state championship (
they lost to Asheville Christian), Felton said their overarchingly subtle culture fits into his nothing-is-given mindset.
“I'm an underdog,” he said.
Playing under first-year coach Blair, a Gastonia native and former ECU and Wichita State forward, Felton is already thinking hard about his progression in the sport. He takes his conditioning seriously, swears by mobility bands and regularly picks the brain of
Jaden Springer, the Charlotte high schooler turned star Tennessee freshman guard turned Philadelphia 76ers first-round pick, on life as a rookie in the NBA.
“I talk to him every day,” Felton said.
Blair’s advice to the sophomore is simple: keep honing your fundamentals and “don’t box yourself in.” Basketball is an increasingly positionless and evolving game, so Felton’s greatest skill to date is his variety of them. And when they’re unleashed, as Tuesday’s second half showed, they’re tough to stop.