Jahmi’us Ramsey is weighing his career options after a stellar freshman year so let’s look at why he should return to the Texas Tech basketball team.
From 1998-2017, the Texas Tech basketball program went without seeing one of its players picked in the first round of the NBA Draft. Thus, the thought that Jahmi’us Ramsey could be the third player in the last three years to go from Texas Tech to the NBA’s first round is as great of a indication of the program’s health these days as almost any other measurement.
That’s because perhaps the most important selling point to the top high school recruits in the nation is the ability to get to the NBA from your program. That’s something that Beard didn’t have the luxury of saying he could do when he arrived.
But when a 3-star recruit from Garland, Texas named Zhaire Smith became Tech’s first-ever one-and-done NBA Draft pick, it opened up tons of doors across the nation for Beard. As a recruit, Smith was just the No. 194 player in the country and the No. 40 shooting guard in the class of 2017 so nobody expected him to have just a one-year career at Tech.
Even in the middle of his freshman season (20-17-18), few people were talking about him as a one-and-done player. The thought was that he would eventually be an NBA player because of his outrageous athleticism but that he needed to refine his game before jumping to the next level.
However, as the season progressed, he showed just enough shooting touch from outside to convince teams that he was worth a first-round pick given his potential as a defensive stopper. And when he showed some amazing athletic feats in the NCAA Tournament (such as his 360 dunk against SFA in the first round), he vaulted himself into the middle of the first round in virtually every mock draft. Eventually, he was selected at No. 16 by the Phoenix Suns and traded to the Philadelphia 76ers.
A year later, we all knew that Jarrett Culver would head to the NBA after the season. Even before averaging 18.5 points per game and earning Big 12 Player of the Year and second-team All-American honors as a sophomore, he was in the top 20 of most mock drafts.
His rise from 3-star recruit to NBA Lottery pick was even more unlikely than Smith’s though when you consider that he was just the No. 312 player in the nation in the class of 2017. But when he was taken by Minnesota at pick No. 6 in last summer’s draft, it gave Tech two-consecutive first-round draft picks for the first time in program history and we’ve since seen that pay off on the recruiting trail.
Seven of the top eleven recruits to ever sign with Texas Tech have done so in the last three recruiting classes. That includes Ramsey, who was the top-ranked recruit in program history when he signed and who is still No. 2 behind only 2020 signee Nimari Burnett.
So let’s look at the decision facing Ramsey because it’s not an easy one. Tomorrow, we will look at reasons why he should head to the NBA but today, let’s look at what might prompt him to return to Tech for another year.