You can relax now, Indiana basketball fans.
Trayce Jackson-Davis, who previously starred at Center Grove and was Johnson County’s first Indiana Mr. Basketball since 1941, announced Friday afternoon that he will be returning to play his junior season with the Hoosiers.
The decision takes a large weight off the shoulders of IU fans, who have already seen the firing of coach Archie Miller and the transfer of Al Durham to Providence after a disappointing 12-15 season. Armaan Franklin, Jordan Geronimo, Khristian Lander and Race Thompson all still have their names in the transfer portal.
Jackson-Davis, an All-Big Ten performer who averaged 19.1 points, 9.0 rebounds and 1.4 blocks as a sophomore, may have calmed some of the panic around Bloomington by sticking around to play for newly hired head coach Mike Woodson.
"I want to get Indiana basketball back on track; that’s my goal. That’s why I came back," Jackson-Davis said. "I believe what we have here is something special.
"I don’t want to be someone who ran away when it was tough."
The expectation now is that times won’t be tough for long. Jackson-Davis said that he and his father met with Woodson for about two hours this week, and they liked what they heard.
"(Woodson) came in and he told us he doesn’t want to rebuild. He wants to win right away, and I’m a big piece to that," Jackson-Davis said. "After hearing an NBA coach tell you that, it was a simple decision."
The NBA is obviously Jackson-Davis’ end goal, and he said Friday that he was "almost dead set on entering the draft and hiring an agent" a couple of weeks ago, but he decided after meeting with Woodson that deferring that dream for another year was in his best interest.
"The things that (Woodson) told me is the things that I did not want to hear," Jackson-Davis said. "He told me what I needed to work on. He showed me clips of me playing, he showed me my missed shots, what I should have done in this situation, where I needed to take shots, and that’s all my dad talks about. He talks about the things that I need to improve on; he never talks about what I’m good at. And so that right there was already showing me that he wants what’s best for me. After he did that, I was sold."
Projected as a second-round pick in most 2021 mock drafts, Jackson-Davis is hopeful that Woodson can help him improve that standing over the next year. Woodson, who comes back to his alma mater after playing in the NBA through the 1980s and serving as an assistant or head coach in the league since 1996, is confident that he can.
"I’m going to beg for him to stay with me," Woodson had said earlier in the week, "because I think I can help him develop and get to the next level.”
Jackson-Davis added that he will respect whatever choices his undecided teammates ultimately make regarding their individual futures, but he expressed his hope that everyone currently in the portal will be back with the Hoosiers.
"I really feel like with the situation that we have going here, Assembly Hall being packed again, having fans back and being able to play under a new style of offense, I really feel like there’s no point to leave," he said. "All the necessary tools are right here at our disposal. We’ve got an NBA coach coming in. I mean, what else do you want?
"The mood here is really, really, really, really positive. I feel like there’s a light. I feel like we’ve been in the dark for a while, and there was no energy here; all the life after the season was sucked out of us. But ever since coach Woodson got hired, it’s almost like new positive vibes came. We’ve been hooping, we’ve been playing some open gyms, us and the guys, and we’re really just excited to be playing basketball again."
