Photo courtesy of Robert Cole.
By David Cordova
For many years, the Georgetown Hoyas have been a very dominant basketball program. They have produced plenty of NBA stars in Dikembe Mutombo, Alonzo Mourning, Allen Iverson and their new head coach, Patrick Ewing. They have also been one of the elite programs in the Big East Conference for many, many years.
In the present day, the Hoyas are rebuilding in Ewing’s first year at the helm with a 12-5 record. They have solid guards on the team and one of them is none other than Jagan Mosely.
The 6-foot-3 sophomore shooting guard from Marlboro, New Jersey is one of the Hoyas’ best scorers, and he also plays hard. He can shoot from deep, but also possesses the ability to show off his athleticism when going to the rim.
He hails from the Garden State, where it has become a haven for good basketball. “Jersey, I might be biased might be the biggest basketball state, tied with New York. It’s prideful, because people back home are watching you and you want to make them proud.”
In high school, he played for the now-defunct powerhouse St. Anthony High School under legendary Hall of Fame coach Bob Hurley. As a junior, Mosely averaged 13 points per game for the Friars.
But his senior year was a sign that he was a special type of player. In his final year of high school, he averaged 14.2 points, seven rebounds and five assists per game for St. Anthony’s and was a part of the last Friar team to win the New Jersey Tournament of Champions title in school history before the school closed last June.
On his time as a Friar, Mosely replied, “Coach Bob Hurley definitely prepared me for this stage. Some parents were against going to St. Anthony’s just because of his system, but my parents trusted him and I trusted him and it paid off.”
Also, while in high school, he had his own documentary called, “My Life, My Journey,” which was filmed by All4TheGame, which chronicled his junior season at St. Anthony. On the documentary, Mosely added: “We were actually supposed to have a part two of my senior year, but it was cool. The director, Mike Jackson, hit me up for my junior year of high school and my parents said they were cool with it, so I just went with it.”
In August 2015, the summer before his senior season, Mosely decided to commit to the Hoyas, who at the time were coached by John Thompson III.
When asked about the reason he committed to Georgetown, he replied, “The history. Going to St. Anthony’s, there’s a lot of history and then going to Georgetown, it’s the same thing. And you see a lot of similarities between Bob Hurley and John Thompson II and then playing for his son, John Thompson III, he recruited me and he trusted me early and threw me into the fire, so I was appreciative of that.”
As a freshman, Mosely started 20 games and averaged 4.2 points and 2.2 rebounds per game. Even though he didn’t have the greatest season in terms of numbers, he had some good performances that showed flashes of brilliance, namely the game on January 7th, 2017, in which he scored 20 points against Butler in an 86-75 overtime loss.
Unfortunately, Georgetown had a dismal 14-18 season, which resulted in the firing of Thompson. And then in came Ewing, who has turned the program around slowly but surely, and has helped them become a solid team.
Mosely has doubled his performance from last year, as he is averaging 7.3 points, 3.3 rebounds and 2.5 assists per game. When asked about playing for Ewing, he replied, “Coach Ewing being in the NBA for 30-plus years as a player and a coach, you know that he obviously knows what he’s doing. You just gotta be a sponge and everything he says, you have to take it to heart. But you have to listen to how he says it, not the way he says it.”
So far he has had a couple of good games, including the one on December 17th in Washington, D.C. against Syracuse, the Hoyas’ former rivals, in which he had 20 points and five rebounds in an 86-79 overtime loss. Another good performance came recently, on January 9th when the Hoyas came to Madison Square Garden in New York and beat St. John’s by three, 69-66. In that game, Mosely scored 13 points and contributed five assists.
So far all is going well for Mosely. And even though the Hoyas are 2-4 in Big East play at the present time, expect them to become even better as time goes on. His plans for the rest of the season are to: “Take it game by game,” said Mosely.
Highlights of Jagan Mosely:
Courtesy of Rivals.com.
Courtesy of Baller Visions.
Courtesy of Hoya Breakdown.
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