Former Wildcat Wynn finds college hoops chance

Division I college basketball is a grand stage no matter what size the school.

Consider Oklahoma's Southwestern Christian University kind of off-Broadway. It's the elite level but in a smaller setting. And in that setting, 2018 Clovis High graduate Jakeem Wynn will continue his basketball career with the NAIA school.

Wynn recently signed a letter of intent to attend Southwestern Christian in Bethany, Oklahoma, where he will play point guard in the Sooner Athletic Conference.

"Very excited," is how Wynn described himself Tuesday morning, and it's not surprising. He spent last season redshirting at JUCO Seminole State College in Seminole, Oklahoma, so he still has four years of college playing eligibility left.

"I thought it was a great opportunity," Wynn said. "It is a Christian-based school."

Wynn's chance came about while he was working out at Seminole State and caught the recruiting eye of Mid-America Christian assistant coach Brandon Rollins. In early June, Rollins became head coach at Southwestern Christian, his alma mater. In a matter of weeks, Wynn was coming to Bethany with him.

"I just thought it was a great opportunity," Wynn said. "He seems like a great guy. He had an interest in me and I thought it was a great opportunity and I pursued it.

"It was a great break."

And the next logical step in a basketball career that began less than 10 years ago.

"Everybody plays when they're a young kid," Wynn said, "but when I really started playing basketball, organized basketball, was in sixth grade. I was about 12."

It was in junior high where Wynn says he sort of found himself.

"My seventh grade year at Marshall Middle School I had a coach, Coach (Curtis) Long," Wynn said. "He was a really fun guy. He let me do whatever I wanted to on the court."

Which allowed Wynn to discover his basketball identity. "I kind of play like a street ball kind of player," he said, "just making a move to get a bucket."

Moving on to high school, Wynn was an integral part of Clovis' boys varsity basketball program and its up-tempo style. For his efforts in his junior season of 2016-17, he was named the District 2-6A Player of the Year.

Wynn's basketball trail led him to Seminole State, thanks to Austin Turner, then a new assistant coach there who had a history with Wynn.

"My AAU coach (Turner) got a job up there," Wynn recalled, "and he told me he wanted to bring me up there to redshirt, work on my game, work on my skill set, gain some more weight, and just be a more polished basketball player."

Though Wynn didn't play at Seminole State, leaving four years of eligibility open, he did get to practice with the players there. And calling the 2018-19 season an eye-opener would be understating it.

"It was a different environment," Wynn said. "High school basketball, I was always the best on the court or on my team, and (Seminole State) was the first time I was actually playing against people at my own skill set. I was struggling at times, too."

But he evolved enough to land the opportunity with SCU. Wynn says he doesn't quite know what his role will be this coming season, nor how it might expand throughout the course of the winter.

"(Rollins) hasn't really talked about playing time or anything like that," Wynn said. "He's new to the job, it's a new team to him. I just think if you work your butt off, if you're aggressive, you're going to get the playing time."

Wynn will be a sophomore in the classroom, a freshman on the court, so he will be new to Division I college competition, new to any college competition. He does, however, have big ambitions for the early stage of his collegiate career.

"I want to be Freshman of the Year in the SAC conference," he said.

Wynn, who plans to major in Business Administration, isn't exactly sure what Rollins' approach will be, but has some inkling.

"During the workout he talked about a lot of ball movement," Wynn said. "He plans on shooting a lot of threes in transition. In high school I really didn't shoot a lot of threes, but I've added a three-ball to my game. ... I'll fit right in."