NEW YORK — Jamal White didn’t have a single Division 1 scholarship offer coming out of Roosevelt High School on Long Island.
So when St. John’s coach Steve Lavin told the 6-foot-4 White he was giving him a scholarship for the upcoming season, White immediately called his girlfriend and then his mother, Deborah.
“They hung up the phone on me and when I got home, they just jumped on me,” White, 21, told SNY.tv during an interview Friday after Midnight Madness. “They didn’t believe it. We all [were] pretty ecstatic.”
Because three St. John’s freshmen — Amir Garrett, Norvel Pelle and JaKarr Sampson — were declared academically ineligible by the NCAA Sept. 15, the Johnnies were down to just seven scholarship players entering the season.
White, a walk-on who transferred from LIU after the 2008-9 season, was then put on scholarship as the eighth player on the roster. Almost by definition, he will be in the rotation when the season begins Nov. 7 against William & Mary.
He will probably also get thrown into the fire against Arizona Nov. 17 and at Kentucky Dec. 1.
“He’s going to have a shot,” St. John’s assistant Rico Hines said. “He’s probably one of the luckiest guys in America right now, you know what I mean? Who wouldn’t want to have a chance to be on the stage that we’re on?”
Said White: “Honestly, I’ll play whatever they put me as. Whatever position they put me as, long as I’m playing.”
As a senior at Roosevelt in 2007-8, White was selected to the All-Long Island team after averaging 26 points, 10 assists, 8 steals and 4 blocks. He once scored 45 points in a game against West Hempstead.
Still, he didn’t have a single scholarship offer.
“No, not at all,” he said.
He ended up at LIU “because I didn’t have a school to go to by the time August came around,” he said.
During the 2008-9 season, White played in just five games for LIU, tallying nine minutes. He didn’t even play against St. John’s in the season opener that November.
After sitting out the following season per NCAA transfer rules, White got into just two games last year when St. John’s made the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2002. He failed to score a single point.
Still, assistant coach Rico Hines said Lavin was considering giving White a scholarship even before the three players were ruled ineligible because he had worked hard to lose weight and prove he belonged in the Big East.
“I came to Jamal before the season even started, before we even knew that those guys weren’t going to be eligible, and I said, ‘Lav’s been asking about you a lot, and I told him you were doing a good job and he’s probably going to give you a scholarship,'” Hines related.
Having played for Lavin at UCLA, Hines knew that the coach had a habit of handing out scholarships to walk-ons when they became available.
“He’s always given scholarships to guys if there was a scholarship left over,” Hines said. “With that being said, he would start those guys sometimes over Dan Gadzuric or myself sometimes. He would start those walks-on over those guys.”
So White was in the right place at the right time, and he made the most of of his opportunity.
“Honestly, I just worked hard and [Lavin] liked what he saw and that’s about it,” White said. “Thank God for Coach Lavin.”
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