A late-comer to basketball, Belleville West’s Lloyd is suddenly a D-I recruit
By the time he was an eighth grader, J’Dyn Lloyd says, he’d never picked up a basketball.
The object most likely to be in his hands at the time was a video game controller, and Lloyd had dreams of becoming a professional gamer.
“I was really excellent as a video gamer,” Lloyd said.
While not quite putting up video-game numbers just yet, the 6-foot-6 junior guard for Belleville West is averaging a team-leading 19 points a game and is getting interest from Division 1 schools. He just got a full-boat offer from the University of Toledo, in fact, to add to offers previously from Southern Illinois Edwardsville, Tulsa, Western Michigan, Missouri State, SIU Carbondale and Kennesaw State.
He hopes for some bigger schools to make offers before his likely commitment timeframe of next summer, including the top school on his wish list, Texas Tech. He is starting to receive some interest, he said, from schools such as Marquette, Illinois and DePaul.
Not bad for a kid who only started playing the sport about four years ago. While he may not end up playing there, Lloyd said he’ll never forget and will always be grateful for that first offer, from Western Michigan this past summer.
“I cried. It was just a blessing. I’d been praying for a day just like that,” said Lloyd, who scored 27 points in a win over Belleville East last weekend.
Lloyd, 17, started getting serious interest from schools before this season even started. Much of that was from standout showings at summer basketball camps, like the Crossroads Elite Invitational in Kansas City and another in Dallas.
“I feel like those camps kind of helped get my name on the map,” Lloyd said.
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Today, video games have no part in Lloyd’s life. Along with his studies, it’s strictly basketball and the workout gym, trying to get more of a “college body” ahead of time.
Indeed, Lloyd’s physique does stand out from your typical junior high-schooler. Countless hours in the gym have given him a lean, muscular build. He’s got good “length”, in hoops parlance. He’s got a 33-inch vertical leap, too.
More lateral quickness and more consistency in his game overall should be goals of his, Maroons coach Alex Schobert said. Schobert said everything else points to a certain career at the next level.
“He’s really taught himself the game, has a great work ethic and loves the game,” Schobert said. “He really turned it on in the second half of his sophomore season, and that’s hard to do as a sophomore because we play in such a tough conference. Now, he’s grown into that and is the focal point of our offense. He’s a match-up problem, because he can step out and shoot it very well from the outside, but if you put a smaller guard on him, which we like to do, he can post people up, in the low post, and score over people.”
Like any high school talent with the ability to play big-time college sports, Lloyd has come of age in a fortunate time. It’s not just free room and board anymore, but serious money that can go with signing to play college sports – most especially in football and basketball.
Should a school such as Texas Tech make an offer, Lloyd would be looking at something in the range of $100,000 per year or possibly much more as guaranteed compensation. Being able to give some of that back to his father, J’Dyn, and mother, Kelly, would be a real dream come true.
“They both have helped me so much, so I feel like if I can make money playing ball too, it’s a motivator for me, sure,” Lloyd said. “My mom never let me get down on myself too much.”
Lloyd has a list of people he credits for getting him this far, not just his parents, but aunt Brittney and his coach.
“He believed in me when nobody did. He gave me a role in my freshman year and always let me play against the older JV and varsity guys and was always telling me I’m next up,” Lloyd said. “He saw me play in my first eighth-grade game and never gave up on me. I love the guy.”
Lloyd thinks he’ll grow an inch or two more, but wants to stay a guard no matter where he plays in college.
“I can play on the wing too, but I like having that guard mentality, which is an attack mentality,” he said.
