New Mexico Basketball: Lobos should be excited about Jaelen House

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New Mexico Basketball Arizona State Sun Devils guard Jaelen House Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports /

After playing two seasons under Bobby Hurley at Arizona State from 2019-21, Jaelen House, the son of former Sun Devil standout and NBA champion, Eddie House, decided to transfer to New Mexico Basketball on April 15th and get a fresh start with the Lobos. Coming out of high school, the Phoenix, Arizona native was a 4-star recruit who received a 93.74 rating on 247Sports Composite and committed to the Sun Devils on December 22, 2017.

House’s senior season at Shadow Mountain High School was nothing short of spectacular, as he averaged 21.6 points, 5.3 assists, 3.8 rebounds, and 5.7 steals in 29 total games (according to Maxpreps). The junior guard notched seven points in his collegiate debut against Colorado and proceeded to join the double-figure scoring club against Central Connecticut, Rider, and St. John’s (14, 20, and 11 points), which was encouraging for me to witness less than 5 games into the young season.

House’s offensive productivity did take a bit of a dip the following 8 games (he scored 21 combined points during that stretch), but he quickly bounced back against Texas Southern with a 20-point performance on 7-9 shooting from the field. After that game, well, House found it difficult to stay on the floor for 15+ minutes consistently and earn Bobby Hurley’s trust. House finished the season averaging 3.9 points while playing 16.0 minutes per contest.

Now, you may look at House’s numbers the following season and ask yourself “Did anything really change for him as a sophomore?”, but I don’t think that it would be terribly wise to ponder that question.

If you compare House’s production during the final 13 games of his freshman campaign to his production during the final 13 games of his sophomore campaign, you will notice that House made himself more of an offensive threat in year 2 and did a better job of forcing his opponents to respect his offensive game (which resulted in him averaging 1.4 more points and 2.7 more minutes than he did in year 1).

House certainly could have received a bigger role in year 3 after the departures of Alonzo Verge Jr. and Remy Martin in the offseason, but transferring from Arizona State to New Mexico could turn out to be a genius move by House when it’s all said and done. In this article, I want to examine a few reasons why the Lobos should be extremely excited about the addition of House.