
Florida didn’t take long to fill at least one of the recently vacated scholarships.
In light of three players opting to transfer from the program, UF landed a commitment from highly regarded forward Jason Jitoboh.
GATORNATION 🐊🐊 #GoGators pic.twitter.com/Lmx1mwL0Nl
— Jason (@JasonJitoboh) March 28, 2019
A 6-foot-11, 270-pound prospect, Jitoboh gives Florida’s 2019 class a sizable presence after signing guards Scottie Lewis and Tre Mann alongside power forward Omar Payne.
The three-star prospect out of Chattanooga, Tennessee, is coming off injuries to his foot and ankle, making it likely the Gators will opt to sit Jitoboh for a season as he recovers and develops.
With the addition of Jitoboh, the Gators have just three open scholarships to fill.
Now that’s some size we need!!
But not for a year 🙁
Yes, the injury issue tempers the excitement a little. Hope he can at least get healthy enough to get in a lot of practice time during redshirt year.
Exactly Joe.
With it being 8 months until the start of next season, I personally hope that his recovery comes along fast enough that he can play some minutes next year. Still hold out hope that one of the big guys in the transfer portal ends up down in Gainesville. Go Gators
I’m still holding onto hope that Stokes takes off season conditioning seriously. He can be a potential game changer on the offensive side of the ball. I love shooting the three point shot but if we have no inside threat, opponents are just going to run us off the line every game.
I think Stokes has shown great potential in his limited playing time.
Completely agree Dallas. I hope he realizes it’s now or never and comes into next season ready to play.
I’m fearful he may join the transfer portal as well but MW SHOULD be able to convince him he has a great opportunity next year.
I think the whole basketball program needs savage, with so many injuries every year. Injuries, constant like this shows lack of conditioning!
You might have a point. It will be hard for Al Pinkins to make his mark on our program if he doesn’t have any bigs to teach / train!!
3 stars?!?! Butters now running bb program?
I know a couple of former 3 stars that are currently projected going in the first round if the NBA draft. A lot of times with 3 stars, it’s how much do they want to be better and they get it more playing college ball than they ever could playing HS or even AAU ball. I only worry about getting someone who’s coming here injured. It’s taken Stokes a year and a half to finally start going after his potential.
Yeah, from what I have gathered, his injury kept his stars at 3….and it can political if you aren’t in the AAU circuit heavy. AT any rate and for depth in a program like ours that has to compete against the Kentuckys, cheating LSU’s of the world….that size doesn’t grow on trees and can be developed. Tennessee’s 3 star guys look pretty good to me.
I wish White recruited the same caliber of big men as he does guards. If he did UF would be a different program. Glad we got another big fella, but sounds like he is more of a long term project much like Bassett and Stokes. What do we have to do to get a big fella that is ready to ball?
Omar Payne not withstanding. He is a good addition but we need a hoss who can really bring it.
Have to remember that he originally only needed to replace one front court player until Chase Johnson left in the middle of the season, and Keith Stone decided to leave too. By then, he probably only had a handful of relationships of unsigned frontcourt players.
That’s is all true, Corey. My point is that it White tends to recruit higher caliber guards than big men. I am sure this commitment was a response to attrition, but it would be great to have higher quality front court players nonetheles. I hope White can shore up this deficiency in the future.
Completely agree with that. Hopefully he can get some higher caliber frontcourt guys in the future…..at least one or two.
Brian, I think the issue is the difference between recruiting and actually signing. I’m sure he’s recruiting the higher caliber bigs, but the issue is signing them. However, that seems to be taking care of itself. He’s progressed from 3 stars, Bassett and Gak, to 4 stars, Chase Johnson, Stokes, and now Payne. Jitoboh is also rated a 4 star by some services. Hopefully, he can move on to a couple of 5 stars from here.
That’s a good point Joe, I do see some improvement here. Stokes was a higher caliber recruit if I remember correctly. I do think Jitoboh has potential to turn into a contributor after a redshirt season, so he may end up being really good for the program. In that respect, at least, this is a good pick up. The impatient fan part of me wants White to hit one out of the park at some point and get a stud who can just really bring it. I think I was spoiled by the recruiting prowess of Donovan. I have such fond memories of U. Haslem, Donnell Harvey, David Lee, P. Young, Al Horford, and of course Noah. Speights and Macklin weren’t too bad either. We just need White to give us one or two in that range for us to be competitive. I would have hoped for at least one big time big to emerge in the first four years, but it hasn’t happened yet.
I like Jitboh’s last name. Makes me think of Egbunu, just a big freaking scary DUDE in the middle. Ah, if only he would have never gotten hurt…I really think we could have made a final four run that year.
oh great, another big man bringing an injury with him, he’ll be a redshirt next season, then will be rehabbing a second surgery the year after that, then he’ll transfer