Mike Rhoades joined Penn State basketball very late in the recruiting cycle this year and that, combined with the fact that he hadn’t had roster spots for recruits at VCU before that, meant that he was dealt a very poor hand in trying to get any high school recruit to join the Nittany Lions after lacking the longstanding relationships with players that most other coaches and schools already had.
He did well to bring in Icelandic guard Bragi Guðmundsson to have one freshman on the team for the 2023-24 season as well as landed an astonishing nine players from the transfer portal in order to fill every available scholarship spot on the team for the season.
Of those players, three are graduate students who will clear spots following the end of the season. That gives Rhoades and staff three spots to work with on recruiting freshman to the program.
It’s still early for the new coaching staff, but that hasn’t stopped them as they landed a commitment from class of 2024 guard Jahvin Carter on Monday.
Home 🤍💙 110% committed @CoachRhoades @PSUCoachJB @PennStateMBB pic.twitter.com/eMdXlmkt0S
— JAH (@JahvinCarter) June 27, 2023
Carter, coming out of Alcoa high school in Tennessee, needed just 10 days between when the staff offered him (June 16) and the day of his commitment.
Carter is coming off a season in which he lead his team to a state championship.
He is currently unranked on 247’s services, but the staff and his high school coaches and teammates certainly expect that to change.
If you were stepping out on the floor with (Carter), you knew you were playing with the best player on the floor, period. That kind of gave a lot of our guys and our team confidence and life that maybe wasn’t the case in the past.
– Ryan Collins, Aloca High School Basketball Coach, to The Daily Times
During the team’s championship season, Carter was a prolific scorer averaging 27.2 points per game. He added six rebounds and five assists to that, not to mention an impressive defensive statistic of two steals per game.
You can see the end of that Championship and parts of the media session with Carter afterward below:
Still thinking about @AlcoaHoops & their 3rd state title in program history?!
WE ARE TOO!
Relive the final moments, courtesy of @cmays_media, of this epic game a week ago today that’ll leave you feeling #TooHype! 🌪🎥 🏆 🎥🌪 pic.twitter.com/yjD8sZKOED
— Too Hype Sports (@2HYPEsports) March 25, 2023
It would certainly seem that Penn State got in ahead of the rush to get him this upcoming season and will look to hold onto him as the bedrock of Coach Rhoades first full recruiting class.
Georgia Tech and Middle Tennessee State were the two programs that had offered Carter prior to Penn State.
