san diego state loses jackson

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SoCalHoops Recruiting News

Bradley Jackson Now Makes
It Six Leaving SDSU--(Apr. 27, 2000)

p-jackson.jpg (4511 bytes) San Diego State announced earlier last month that five players from this year's squad (all of them recruited by former head coach Fred Trenkle) would not be returning to the team, either because their scholarships would not be renewed or because they were told they would receive insignificant amounts of playing time.

Make that six players leaving.

Yesterday, Bradley Jackson (5'-10" Fr. PG) asked Coach Steve Fisher for his release, saying that he no longer wanted to play at the school. According to our sources, Fisher was reportedly upset about the request, as Jackson had been one of the players expected to return, and this once again leaves San Diego State scrambling for another point guard to give David Abramowitz (6'-0" So. PG) some help, and it's particularly problematic for the Aztecs because it appears they completely backed off of Kenny Brunner (6'-0" So. PG), the troubled Compton Dominguez graduate who first started off at Georgetown, then Fresno State, then LA County Jail, followed by a stint at the College of Southern Idaho this past season. Brunner would have not only filled a gap at the point, but as things now stand with Jackson leaving would have been a starting-quality point who could have helped stabilize the backcourt.

Jackson's history is one of transfers, and he wound up at Inglewood during his senior season, after transferring from South Torrance. After a great senior season in 1997-98, he achieved some degree of notoriety with at least one local school, Cal State Northridge, where he had committed during the early fall signing period two years ago. In the spring of 1998, Jackson started to get cold feet about his commitment to Northridge, believing that he might have signed too early and would have been recruited by a higher-level D-I program. However, because he had signed an LOI, the only way to get out of it was either to have CSUN grant him a release, or fail to graduate, and since Coach Bobby Braswell was not inclined to grant him a release, Jackson determined to void his letter by not graduating from high school which he accomplished by failing one of his classes (a class coincidentally taught by one of his basketball coaches at Inglewood). The next year, Jackson attended Bridgton Academy in Connecticut, a prep school, where he averaged 15 ppg and 6 assists per game. Upon his return to SoCal last spring, Jackson was spotted by Coach Fisher at the Rockfish Spring League and signed to an LOI.

Jackson played in 21 games last season, starting in all but three of them, playing 616 minutes overall (29 minutes per game, the second most of anyone on the team). He averaged 7.5 ppg and 3.8 assists per game.

Jackson reportedly has not yet determined whether to attend a JC (most likely the College of Southern Idaho, which is, if you stop and think about the Brunner connection, ironic to say the least) or another four year school.

San Diego State has signed only one player during the late spring period, Karlo Kovacic, and in the early period picked up LOI's from Chris Walton and Aerick Sanders. So, with the five leaving and Donte Wilson graduating, San Diego State had 8 possible scholarships to give (they only had 11 players on scholarship last year), and thus the Aztecs still are looking at trying to fill 5 more slots before next season.