FORT WAYNE, Ind. — Jerome Hunter walked off Court No. 5 on Saturday afternoon inside the Spiece Fieldhouse and shook hands with nearly a dozen people.
On his way over to another court, where he planned to watch another basketball game as he waited for his next, Hunter shook hands with nearly a dozen more.
Such is life when you’re one of the top prospects competing at the Spiece Run N Slam — one of the top AAU events each year in the Midwest. Everybody wants to congratulate you on a good game.
Hunter is a unique talent. He’s an athletic 6-foot-7 wing who can do it all. The four-star prospect from Pickerington, Ohio, has over a dozen scholarship offers — Illinois and N.C. State are the most recent ones — and more are surely coming soon.
Ohio State is one of the schools to offer Hunter. Thad Matta and the Buckeyes’ staff extended one last August prior to Hunter’s junior year. But because Ohio State accepted a commitment from Darius Bazley just a couple of weeks after it offered Hunter, communication between the two slowed a bit. Hunter and Bazley are somewhat similar players and Ohio State, at the time, only had one additional spot available in its 2018 recruiting class and was targeting a guard.
Things have changed a bit now.
Somewhat surprisingly, Bazley decommitted from the Buckeyes a couple of weeks ago. And, as a result, Ohio State amped up in its pursuit of Hunter.
“Yeah, it's picked up a lot," Hunter said. "Since Darius decommitted, it’s picked up a lot.”
The Buckeyes would surely be wise to do so. After a huge season at Pickerington North High School — he averaged 19 points and 11 rebounds per game — where Hunter led his team to an Elite Eight appearance, things have carried over to AAU ball this spring. Playing for OH-Nova on the Adidas circuit, Hunter is performing at a high level against some top competition.
Right now, according to the 247 composite ratings, Hunter is the No. 4 player in the state of Ohio. But there seems to be a growing thought that after his big junior season at Pickerington North and a strong spring, Hunter is actually cementing himself as the best player in the state.
So yeah, Ohio State has ramped up its efforts.
“They just want me bad because they don’t have anybody like me right now," Hunter said. "So they keep telling me they want me bad.”
Hunter's quick rise seems fairly simple to explain. He's still relatively new to the game of basketball as he said he only started playing in sixth grade. He appears to only be scratching the surface of what he can become.
"Somebody just made me play because of how tall I was," he joked.
Because of that, Hunter said he didn't have a favorite school growing up. He barely even watched basketball and this whole recruiting thing is a little bit crazy, he admitted.
He described his recruitment as "wide open" right now and there's no current timetable for a decision. Hunter said there are a lot of schools currently after him. In addition to his new Illinois and N.C. State offers, he's also been offered by Michigan, Butler, Xavier, Pittsburgh and more. Some of college basketball's bluebloods could begin to get involved in the very near future, too, if he continues this current ascension.
Ohio State probably has work to do for make up for some lost time over the last year. But the Buckeyes appear to be back heavily involved in their pursuit of one of Ohio's best players in a loaded 2018 class.
“I’m real close with Coach Dickerson and Coach Matta I’m getting to know more now so it’s good,” Hunter said. “I’m just going along with it.”
