Jarin Stevenson spent two years as a top basketball prospect. Why he chose Alabama over UNC

Editor’s note: This is part of an occasional series exploring what it’s like to be a top college basketball recruit in 2023.

They placed everything in the middle of the living room, all the things Jarin Stevenson needed and wanted to take to college, his entire life packed into bags and boxes. Here he was, 17 years old, off to Alabama after graduating high school a year early; a new life and new world ahead of him, one he believed provided the best and fastest path to fulfilling a dream.

He’d held that dream as long as he could remember. Ever since he was a young kid in South Korea, where his father, Jarod, played professional basketball, and certainly since the family moved back to the United States and to Chapel Hill, where Stevenson’s mom, Nicole, had played college basketball at North Carolina.

Since seventh grade, Jarin had lived about a 10-minute drive from the Smith Center, on the edge of a college-basketball-mad town in a state known for the sport, but it’d been a long time since the college game held the kind of aura, here or anywhere, it once did.

As much as anything, perhaps that’s what was leading Stevenson away. He didn’t grow up with visions of being a Tar Heel and running out of a tunnel in front of 21,000 people in a haze of light blue. He didn’t grow up in a time when most of the best stuck around long enough to make a name in college. He grew up, instead, with a grander stage in mind.

For almost two years, since UNC became the first to offer him a college scholarship before the start of his sophomore season, Stevenson’s thoughts came to be dominated by one question: Which path was the best path? The right one? Basketball-focused prep schools tried to woo him away from Seaforth High School. So had new developmental programs like Overtime Elite, and another associated with the NBA. Colleges came calling — from the ACC, from the Big East, from the SEC.

The question remained ever-present: Among all those options, which made the most sense?

“I’m just looking for the best situation to help get me to the NBA,” Stevenson said in late May, surrounded by his parents in their living room, and in the same breath he acknowledged what he also knew to be a truth: “I don’t really know exactly what the right way is.”

Now, a little more than a month had passed and everything was settled — as much as anything could be in the most turbulent and ever-evolving environment any up-and-coming basketball player had ever had to navigate. College basketball was changing and with it an entire sport. The ways of old no longer applied. Stevenson, and teenagers aspiring for greatness, like him, were living through those changes, adapting in real time, and now he thought he’d found his way.

He graduated high school a year early. He made up his mind. He packed his bags for Alabama.

He and his parents loaded them into a car in the driveway on a Wednesday morning in late June, the humidity already thick. They took turns carrying out duffel bags, pillows, plastic tote boxes; everything Stevenson needed for his journey. He’d carefully packed up his PlayStation 5, a necessity. There were boxes of ramen noodles in the back. He placed pairs of Nike basketball sneakers wherever they’d fit, about 10 pairs in all. It was almost time now.

Jarin Stevenson, among North Carolina’s top basketball prospects, makes college choice

Stevenson had announced his college choice only a week earlier. Eventually, he turned off the ability to comment under his post on Twitter to prevent the predictable onslaught of negativity from those he’d disappointed, most of the hate coming from UNC fans.

So ended a long recruitment. It came to represent a new era, one in which the power of marquee college programs never seemed more diminished, and that belonging to teenage athletes never more influential. Stevenson climbed into the passenger seat and waited to leave. The minutes passed slowly. He insisted he was ready.

Stevenson questions reclassification

About a month before he finalized his decision, Stevenson already had a good idea he’d made it. It was late May, about two weeks after he’d returned from his one and only visit to Alabama. He’d never before been to Tuscaloosa, home of the Crimson Tide. He’d never been to the state at all.

It was a nine-hour drive from home. Alabama had been a late arrival to his recruitment, so late that on the surface it didn’t seem to have much of a chance. Stevenson had held an offer from UNC for a year and a half, after all; so ingrained was the perception that he was a lock for the Tar Heels that Stevenson’s parents had to fight it, and offer reassurance that his recruitment really was open.

First, though, he found himself wrestling with another decision: the question to reclassify. In recent years, it has become something of a trend, with some of the best of the best high school prospects deciding to forgo their senior year of high school and graduate early. GG Jackson, once the top-ranked prospect in the class of 2023, reclassified a year ago and spent one tumultuous season at South Carolina. Emoni Bates, once the top-ranked prospect in the class of 2022, reclassified and has spent years in search of stability, and opportunity.

Stevenson, then approaching the end of his junior year at Seaforth High, outside of Pittsboro, was going to have the academic credits. He was a near straight-A student. Like a lot of 17-year-olds, though, he felt done with it all — the homework, tests, the assignments that felt “like busy work.”

“I just didn’t like high school,” he said.

“He’s being truthful,” Nicole said, and she knew her son often felt like an outlier.

He was always the tallest kid at school, and that made him feel different. He was always more of an introvert, quick to smile — and he often did, especially on the court — but reserved and quiet, qualities that could make it challenging to form lasting friendships. Stevenson, too, was always the most talented kid in school, blessed with gifts of athleticism that portended great things, but ones that could make it more difficult to relate.

So he felt ready to move on. His parents, meanwhile, didn’t know what to feel. About 30 years ago, they’d both followed their own basketball journeys into college, and compared to today everything seemed much less complicated.

It was a time before social media, which has amplified the exposure of young players but also enhanced the pressure and toxicity surrounding them. It was a time before a big-money industry had come to envelop high-level high school basketball players, before viral highlight reels or “branding” or a league like Overtime Elite. It was a time before widespread Internet recruiting coverage and rankings, that ones that now regarded Stevenson as a top 10 or 20 prospect in his class. It was a time, in college, of far less movement; long before the transfer portal, a time of college athletes staying in one place, for better or worse.

Jarod Stevenson spent four years at Richmond, where he became the CAA Player of the Year in 1998 and led the Spiders to a memorable first-round victory against South Carolina in the NCAA Tournament. Nicole Stevenson spent four years at UNC, where she became an important contributor in Sylvia Hatchell’s program. Transferring around, so prevalent now, wasn’t an option in college basketball. Neither was reclassifying, which has only recently become widespread.

Nicole and Jarod, who coached Jarin’s teams at Seaforth the past two seasons, now found themselves caught in the middle of a complicated question: How could they support the desires of their son, and encourage him to make his own decisions, while also trying to save him from doing something irreversible, something they feared could be a mistake?

“I think Jarin can do it, as far as basketball-wise,” Jarod said in late May, of the thought of graduating high school early. “I guess our biggest thing was could he handle the mental pressures of it?”

Everything would be different, and instantly, if Jarin reclassified. He’d be away from home for the first time, at 17. There’d be college coursework. Far better competition, in practices and eventually in games, than what he faced at Seaforth and even on the AAU circuit in the Nike Elite Youth Basketball League. Jarin had always been the best player on the court, or at least one of the very best. What would happen when that was no longer the case?

Or when he didn’t play? Or when he inevitably endured a moment, or even months, of humbling?

If Jarin were to reclassify, Nicole wanted him to be someplace “that feels supportive,” she said.

“I mean, if he doesn’t play and he feels supported, it’s still tough,” Jarod said.

“There still needs to be some level of support and trust from the coach,” Nicole said. “That’s big to me, too.”

Together they’d made some decisions, at least. Going back to Seaforth was off the table. The lacking competition in one of the state’s smallest high school classifications made that an untenable option. Overtime Elite and the NBA’s G-League Ignite had also been eliminated. Both had sent players to the NBA in recent years, but the quality of play and instruction remained debatable. The choices, then, became a year of prep school at a proven program — an IMG Academy or Prolific Prep or Link Academy, for instance — or to graduate early and go to college now.

In May, one of those prep schools sent the Stevensons a spreadsheet designed to scare Jarin away from the idea of reclassifying. At the bottom, the school included a quote from Kentucky coach John Calipari: “If you’re not mentally mature enough or physically ready, why would you reclassify? ... You’re setting somebody up for failure.” And another from Kansas coach Bill Self: “You’re trying to put growing up and maturing in fast-forward, which I don’t think is good.”

And beneath that, a fact of note: “No NBA All-Stars this year were re-class ups.”

The spreadsheet listed more than two dozen players who’d considered the same question Jarin was now considering, and who’d decided to graduate high school early. Next to their names, it listed their former recruiting ranking — top 15 in their class, or top 20, or top 30 and on and on — and what had happened to them. Ten had transferred. Ten others had stayed at their schools but were receiving “Low PT,” as the spreadsheet put it. Next to Emoni Bates’ name, it said, “Transfer, Bad Stats ... Stock Down.” Next to GG Jackson’s, it said, “Bad Stats, Bad Maturity ... Stock Down.”

Jarin held the spreadsheet and studied it. He’d just finished a large bowl of pasta for lunch and his legs were churning away on a stationary pedal machine, allowing him some low-level cardio while he sat on the couch.

“I don’t know,” he said, looking over a list of reclassifications gone wrong. “I still think I could do it, if I put the work in.”

On UNC, and youthful silliness

Three weeks before he finalized his decision, its imminence was becoming more and more of a trending topic in the online gathering places that the most passionate — and in some cases the most reality-challenged — UNC fans frequent. By then, on June 1, Jarin had held a scholarship offer from UNC for about 20 months. A vocal and online contingent of Tar Heel nation, aware and proud of their favorite team’s place in the college basketball hierarchy, was growing impatient.

On a message board on InsideCarolina.com, a popular website that covers UNC sports and pays close attention to recruiting, fans were going back and forth about Stevenson, trafficking in speculation. Why hadn’t he committed? When was he going to? Was his recruitment worth the trouble? Posters debated the merits of the reclassification debate. Some debated the merits of Stevenson, period.

It was how narratives formed in the Internet age, whether they were tethered to reality or not, and among a segment of UNC fans, online narratives were starting to form around Stevenson: that he had helicopter parents; that he was holding out for a payday from a name, image and likeness deal; that he was never really interested in the Tar Heels in the first place because, if he had been, he already would’ve committed. What could possibly be the hold up, after all?

Back in the real world, Stevenson had just returned from his official visit to UNC, a place he’d visited unofficially many times over the years. The basketball program arranged lodging for him and his family at the Carolina Inn, the posh and historic hotel on the edge of campus. There was a large dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, Stevenson and his family sharing a fancy meal with UNC coach Hubert Davis and his staff and star center Armando Bacot, among others.

Seth Trimble and Jalen Washington, two rising sophomores at UNC, were among Stevenson’s hosts. They walked to Insomnia Cookies on Franklin Street, and showed Stevenson their apartment. It was all the routine, standard fare of a recruiting visit in a college basketball landscape in which routines, and tradition, have been upended.

For decades the Tar Heels — with their six NCAA championships, their pedigree as one of college basketball’s most victorious programs, their rafters full of banners and their insistence that they were more of a basketball family than a program — often had their pick of in-state talent. From Phil Ford, out of Rocky Mount, to Mike Jordan, out of Wilmington, to Jerry Stackhouse, out of Kinston, to Coby White, out of Goldsboro, and the list goes on, UNC was often where North Carolina’s best prospects went.

In Stevenson’s case, it was fair to wonder, though, how much any of that mattered. It was fair to wonder how much it mattered for any prospect who arrived in college among the best in their class. Among the top 25 players in the high school class of 2022, according to 247sports.com, 16 spent a year in college before being selected in the NBA Draft. Among the nine who didn’t enter the draft, five returned to their same school while the other four transferred. In the class of 2021, not one of the top 25 prospects spent more than a year at the college they chose out of high school.

They all either entered the draft or transferred. It was indicative of the state of college basketball these days, in which the central question is often not what a player can do for a program — which is how many fans and even coaches might view it — but what a program can do for a player.

At UNC, Stevenson left his visit having “learned a lot,” he said. Among the lessons: “Playing time might be tough” if he were to reclassify. Davis, he said, made no such promises. His message was one of competing and working hard and though Stevenson understood he’d need to do that anywhere, he especially valued “a place where I can show off my abilities.” Meanwhile, he and his parents were still debating the decisions in front of them.

“My mom, she’s a little scared about me leaving to go to college in a couple of months,” Stevenson said, “or maybe next month.”

He still had a few more days as a student at Seaforth. The school held its end-of-year sports banquet on June 1, and Jarin and Jarod rode together to the event. A carnival-like scene awaited. A pair of young women on stilts greeted those arriving, and so did food trucks offering local ice cream, Mexican food and fried chicken and fish. The school rented inflatable entertainment and set it all up on the football field — a bounce-house obstacle course; a gladiator ring, and soon Jarin found himself with some of his high school teammates, engaging in youthful silliness.

He took off his sneakers and entered one of the rubber contraptions and raced a classmate, the two of them bouncing and sprinting about until they tumbled over the finish line. On the Internet, the message boarders were posting away about Jarin, wondering when he’d make up his mind, hoping his choice aligned with their fandom, their need for entertainment and validation. At the same moment, Jarin lined up for another go through the bounce house. He was still a high school kid, carefree, and he knew those days were numbered.

Jarin comes to a decision

About a week before Jarin finalized his decision, Jarod and Nicole walked upstairs to the family bonus room, where Jarin was immersed in another session of the NBA 2K video game. In the virtual world, he was averaging 25 points and seven assists 30 games into his rookie season. In the real world, he’d made up his mind to reclassify, and he knew where he wanted to go to school, too.

By then, Jarin had announced his three college finalists: Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia. His post on Twitter with the news amassed more than 300,000 views and generated hundreds of comments, many from fans responding with GIFs — UNC’s Rameses mascot here; Virginia coach Tony Bennett there; a “Roll Tide” a scroll or two down.

His parents wanted Jarin to be sure, and so they approached the whiteboard — the one they often used for family games of Pictionary with Jarin and his younger sister, Naomi, and his older brother, Cameron — and wrote out the three schools, and the pros and cons of each.

Everyone loved Bennett, of Virginia, and he’d created an identity of stability and success, with the peak of the 2019 national championship a statement about what his teams could accomplish. His program carried a sterling reputation, the campus retained a natural beauty that rivaled the most beautiful of campuses, even UNC’s. In conversations with the Stevensons, including one in mid-June, Bennett provided an honest assessment of Jarin’s chances to play early.

They weren’t great. Bennett thought it could be worthwhile to redshirt, if Jarin were to reclassify.

“I think it sort of works against” Virginia’s chances, Jarin said days later, “but at the same time I see what he’s trying to say. And I see that I still need to develop a lot in order to be ready for the next level, whether it’s college or the NBA.”

At UNC, “Coach Davis, he believes in me a lot,” Jarin said. It helped that Davis had a well-earned reputation as one of the kindest people in college basketball. Jarin knew the history of the place, the tradition; he took pride in being a legacy, and that his mom played there. And yet the concerns remained obvious, too: that Davis, for all his positivity and character, didn’t have much use for his bench during his first two seasons as the Tar Heels’ head coach. That seven players transferred out of UNC after last season. That, well, Jarin didn’t see much of a path to playing, at least not early.

That left Alabama, where Jarin saw a clear opportunity to play and “a solid spot,” as he put it. He liked his chances of playing early there. Of fitting into an NBA-style offense that could allow him to play from the perimeter. The Crimson Tide first contacted the Stevensons after Jarin’s junior season at Seaforth had already started. Then they didn’t hear anything for a while. The silence coincided with the Tuscaloosa murder investigation that quickly ensnared the Alabama men’s basketball program, and called into question coach Nate Oats’ control over it.

Police in mid-January arrested Darius Miles, an Alabama basketball player, and charged him with murder in the Jan. 14 shooting death of Jamea Jonae Harris. The university dismissed Miles. Brandon Miller, the team’s star freshman, whom the Charlotte Hornets recently selected second in the NBA Draft, allegedly delivered to Miles the gun he used in the shooting — one Miles allegedly owned. Miller was neither dismissed nor disciplined; to the contrary, Oats defended him.

“Definitely a concern,” Jarod said, of the circumstances that surrounded Alabama last season. When he and the family visited Tuscaloosa in early May, Jarod said, Oats “told us about what happened, the situation. ... It wasn’t something he was afraid to talk about. So pretty much all the questions we asked about it, he answered. Him and the athletic director.”

But still.

“I guess we know Jarin,” Jarod said, “and Jarin isn’t really the type that hangs out much. Like, at night. I mean, I guess it could change in college, but we’re not afraid of him being in that type of situation. And then we met a lot of the players, and we felt like maybe that guy was sort of like an outlier.”

Since the end of last season, Oats had replaced all of his assistant coaches.

“They’re saying they’ll watch out for Jarin,” Jarod said. “And make sure he doesn’t get in trouble.”

But still.

Jarod and Nicole were letting go. Their oldest, Cameron, was already leaving the house later this summer to pursue football at a prep school in Myrtle Beach. Now Jarin had made up his mind to reclassify. In the final days before his announcement, schools made their final pitch. There was one last long phone call with Davis. One last hour-long Zoom conversation with Tony Bennett.

NIL deals, which hadn’t been part of schools’ recruiting pitches, suddenly became part of the discussion as the finish line approached. It wasn’t money, though, that Jarin most wanted, or even cared all that much about. He and his family lived a comfortable life, thanks to Jarod’s playing days overseas, and he didn’t grow up wanting. What he wanted, now, was a chance to prove himself at a higher level. A chance to play in the NBA, and soon. And now, as that whiteboard in the bonus room filled with pros and cons, maybe to be left alone with his decision and go back to his pretend NBA career, to envision the thought of a real one.

Long way to Alabama

On the day he finalized his decision, Jarin shared the news of it as planned, around 8 p.m. the night of June 21. He didn’t want any fanfare with it. No press conference. No ceremony at school. No sitting behind a table with hats lined up. No Instagram live. No TikTok. No frills. Just a tweet. Thirty words, not including an elephant emoji and #RollTide hashtag:

“I want to thank everyone who supported me and showed me love. With lots of prayer, I have decided to reclass to 2023 and play for the University of Alabama.”

Colleges had courted him for 625 days. Almost two years of wondering which option was the best option, and then Jarin decided to accelerate the process by a year. The reaction from those he’d disappointed was predictable, and ongoing as of late June. People left about 1,500 posts on the InsideCarolina message board thread with the news of Jarin’s decision; the thread had been viewed about 140,000 times. A lot of people had difficulty understanding it.

Meanwhile, a local writer, Art Chansky, the author of several college basketball books, wrote a column for a Chapel Hill radio station’s website with the headline, “The wrong choice.” Stevenson, so went the first sentence, “made the worst of his final three choices.”

Back in the real world, Jarin and his parents began preparing for a departure, and a goodbye. Between rounds of video games with his brother, Jarin watched the NBA Draft the day after his announcement. He wanted to see where Alabama’s players went, particularly Noah Clowney, a rangy forward who arrived in Tuscaloosa ranked in the 90s, in his class, only to be selected 21st after his freshman season.

In Clowney, Jarin saw a little of himself. What could be possible.

“I was thinking that, for sure,” he said now, sitting in the passenger seat on a humid Wednesday morning. The car was just about packed up now, his 10 pairs of sneakers with the ramen noodles, the duffel bags and the pillows and the fans, the computer monitor and the PlayStation 5. Nicole had placed all of Jarin’s important documents in a folder and handed it to him the way only a mother could. His birth certificate. His passport. He didn’t know what he’d need.

Jarin made one last pass upstairs, glanced in his room, his bed made and everything in order, and took with him an extra phone charger and toothbrush. Can’t forget those. He walked down the stairs at home for the last time — for now, before going away — and he and his brother traded some sibling banter, roasting each other on Jarin’s way out the door.

“Didn’t think my brother would leave the house before me,” Cameron said, with some dry humor.

Soon he was outside, offering a goodbye. And soon Jarin had unbended himself from the confines of the passenger seat to give his mom a hug. She hoped what she and Jarod had tried to instill in him would endure. She hoped he was ready for what was coming, without knowing, truly, what that was. It was a hope Jarin shared, and his dad, too.

For a player pursuing these kinds of basketball dreams, the path had never been more muddled. College basketball’s place, meanwhile, had never felt more murky.

Jarod pulled out of the driveway, slowly, while Nicole stood behind and watched the first of her children leave home. It was a long way to Alabama.