Washington Basketball: Jamal Bey commits to the Huskies

While the players from Washington basketball’s Lorenzo Romar regime still remain, they will have plenty of competition for minutes this season.

First-year coach Mike Hopkins has a big rebuilding job on his hands. Not only does he take over a team who finished in the bottom three of the Pac-12 conference, but he also lost the No. 1 overall pick, Markelle Fultz.

He has gotten started to bring in new talent for both this season and 2018, though. With the top guards on the roster being juniors, the Huskies need to find the next group of stars. This past weekend, they added one in 2018 wing Jamal Bey.

Bey, a three-star player, will join other 2018 recruits in forward Ed Chang and point guard Elijah Hardy. At 6’6″, 185 pounds, he fits well into the zone defense Hopkins may run, being a former assistant of Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim. Bey brings great size and has the athleticism and versatility to play/guard multiple positions.

The wing chose Washington over other Pac-12 schools such as Arizona State, Utah, and USC. Another contender was Gonzaga, who had Bey’s Bishop Gorman teammate and top-10 pick Zach Collins on the team last year.

What may have given the Huskies the edge in his recruitment is his high school coach Grant Rice, whose brother Dave is currently part of the Washington basketball coaching staff. Once Rice joined the staff in June, the team recruited Bey harder than any other school, and it paid off in the end.

Next: What would a Pac-12 challenge look like?

It may be awhile before we hear much, considering that the starting guards will be seniors in 2018 unless they decide to leave. Add to it that the current freshmen guards and wings in four-stars Jaylen Norell, Nahziah Carter and Hameir Wright, then Bey could be a redshirt candidate for 2018. Still, the staff thinks highly of him to include him in their plans for the future.