Worth the Wait: For Jalen Hudson, It's About to Get Real Again

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Last January, Jalen Hudson sat in his dorm room — alone — and watched on television as his Florida teammates pulverized LSU and Oklahoma on the road during a five-day road trip. He sat behind the UF bench when the Gators handed Kentucky its worst loss in series history, as the Rowdy Reptiles showered adoration on their beloved squad. And again back in his dorm room, Hudson felt helpless and heartbroken (on Valentine's Day, no less) when center and friend John Egbunu suffered a season-ending knee injury at Auburn.

The Vanderbilt losses? The NCAA Tournament wins? The Madison Square Garden magic? The scoring struggles versus South Carolina in the Elite Eight?

"In a way, it's like you're going through the season alone, in your own little world," said Hudson, who was sidelined per the NCAA one-year transfer sit-out rule. "People didn't even know I was part of the team."

Prediction: There will be no mistaking Jalen Hudson is part of the 2017-18 Florida basketball team.

When the eighth-ranked Gators open the season Monday night against Gardner-Webb (0-1), Hudson likely will be on the bench for the tip — but not for long. Since transferring from Virginia Tech in June 2016, the 6-foot-6, 192-pound fourth-year junior from Richmond, Va., has been as prolific a scorer as anyone on the team, be it during pick-up games, practices, scout-team looks, whatever. That's quite a statement, considering junior shooting guard and 2017 first-team All-Southeastern Conference honoree KeVaughn Allen is in the gym. So is first-team All-Conference USA forward Egor Koulechov, the graduate transfer from Rice who joined the squad in July.

[Read senior writer Chris Harry's comprehensive "Pregame Stuff" setup here]

This UF bunch has three guys with proven track records for scoring the ball, which may make some wonder if they can co-exist.

"I don't see why not?" senior point guard Chris Chiozza asked. "It's not like they're selfish and that's all they want to do. They're just good at it."

The bigger question — the one Coach Mike White wants ultimately to be answered in the affirmative — is if the Gators can grow into a far better defensive team than they've shown during preseason practices, scrimmages and games? It's a question that also can be individually applied to Hudson, whose reputation as a scorer preceded him when he arrived at VPI in 2014, but whose inconsistency as a defender kept him on the sidelines for extended minutes at a time.

"He's always been able to score and he's always struggled on defense," said UF assistant coach Jordan Mincy, who was at Kent State five years ago when Hudson was a prep standout at Akron (Ohio) St. Vincent-St. Mary. "It's a an everyday conversation with him."

The Gators believe they're making their point. They'll make it to Hudson during the season, if need be, the same way they made it to guys last year. When 2016-17 UF players had defensive breakdowns, they heard the buzzer and quickly were sitting next to their coaches. It was a checks-and-balances system that helped Florida become one of the top defensive teams in the country.

White won't make an exception for Hudson, regardless of how graceful he looks on offense. What good is scoring 20 a game if you're giving up 20?

In a way, that's kind of this Florida team in microcosm.

"He's a better defender than he was a month ago," White said. "Jalen is a guy I've constantly challenged because offense comes so easy to him, and he knows that."

Yes, he does.

"They won't let up," Hudson said. "But I'm going to get better. I'm already better. Obviously, it's an overall team thing and the coaches will never let it rest. At some point, we've all got to show that everything they're talking about is sinking in."

And for Hudson, the wait to do so has been (too) long coming.

EVERYTHING CAME SO EASY

Jalen Hudson was born in Richmond, the youngest of three siblings. In time, his parents divorced, but Hudson remained close to both, as well as his two older sisters, one of which ran track at the University of North Carolina. Obviously, the family's athletic genes did not stop with her.

In fact, Hudson was a natural.

He was standout in both football and basketball at the youth level. For high school, Hudson was enrolled at Benedictine Prep, a military prep school, and started at quarterback for the junior varsity team. Hudson didn't necessarily need the military-school structure, according to Sean McAloon, his coach and geography teacher at Benedictine. But he needed some more focus. More perspective.

"Jalen was always a super-talented, super-confident kid," said McAloon, now coach at Bradenton (Fla.) IMG Academy. "What he needed was to be broken down and made to realize things weren't so easy. His speed had to change. His attitude needed to change. We held him accountable to a point where he'd not been held accountable before."

As Hudson started figuring some things away from the game, he got even better at the game.

In the middle of his sophomore football season, the varsity QB got hurt, Hudson was moved up and eventually had to play.

"He didn't know the plays, so they had to run them all into the huddle and he'd check them on his wristband," recalled father Jerry Hudson. "I remember just watching him run around and throwing the ball and making plays. I was sitting up near the press box and I heard the announcer ask someone in the booth, 'Who is this kid?' I just yelled, "That's my son!' "

Counter-clockwise from upper left: Jalen Hudson at 1; Jerry Hudson and his young son; Jerry Hudson at senior night at Akron St. Vincent/St. Mary; a high-flying Jalen dunking during a high school game.

Indeed, Jerry Hudson was a very proud papa. A very involved one, too. He eventually took a job in Akron, and when some family issues arose Jalen went to live with his father in Ohio. There, he was enrolled at St. Vincent-St. Mary, the same prep school that produced LeBron James, and played for the same coach who helped groom the Cleveland Cavaliers superstar.

Hudson reached the state championship his junior year and state semifinals as a senior, averaging 18 points and 5.5 rebounds that final season. It was during the summer before, though, that Hudson blew up on the AAU circuit when he went back to Richmond, lived with his sister, and was reunited with some of his former club teammates. Hudson wanted to play collegiately in the state he grew up, and had his choice of schools, narrowing the list to Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth and Virginia Tech before signing with the Hokies and then-coach James Johnson in the fall of his senior year.

Johnson, though, was fired in the spring and replaced by Buzz Williams.

"I didn't know anything about Buzz Williams," Hudson said. "I'd never even heard of him."

Williams came to Akron to meet with Hudson and his father, and the two decided to honor the national letter-of-intent.

"At the end of the day, the coaches may have changed, but Jalen's talent had not," Jerry said. "He decided to give it a shot and see what happens."

As a freshman, Hudson started three of 32 games, but finished fourth on the team in scoring with a 6.9 per-game average, playing less than 17 minutes each, often playing out of position at point guard. His defense was spotty.

"I had an all right year, but I had trouble adjusting to his playing style," Hudson said of Williams, a stickler for defense. "It was tighter, a little slower than I was used to."

For the season, Hudson shot 47.9 percent from the floor. He went for 18 points at Syracuse, 23 in an overtime loss to Duke, and a career-high 32 (including 10-for-10 from the free-throw line) in a win over Wake Forest in the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament. The Hokies, though, finished 11-21 overall and last in the ACC with a 2-16 league mark.

The situation would be better in Hudson's second year, he was convinced of that. Tech had a high-profile transfer point guard set to turn eligible — Seth Allen by way of Maryland — who would free Hudson to play exclusively on the wing.

His scoring average went up slightly (8.4 points per game), but again his minutes were up and down.

Hudson scored 23 points in 28 minutes in a win at over North Carolina State, then the next night had two points in 15 minutes in an upset of Virginia. Hudson poured in 27 in 37 minutes in a loss to Louisville, then played 15 minutes the next game against Pittsburgh.

One game, late in the season, Hudson sat for all but six minutes, then in the first round of the NIT, he scored 28 in a victory over Princeton, logging 34 minutes. Two nights later? Four points in 19 minutes in a loss at Brigham Young.

That was his last game in a Virginia Tech uniform.

GREENER (ORANGE AND BLUE) PASTURES

Sometimes, it's just about the fit.

Obviously, Williams is a good coach. He was promoted from assistant to head coach at Marquette when Tom Crean left for Indiana. He took the Golden Eagles to five NCAA tournaments, including two Sweet 16s and an Elite Eight. Last year, while Hudson was sitting out in Gainesville, the Hokies won 22 games and got just their second NCAA bid over the previous 20 years.

But Hudson never felt like he was one of Williams' guys — and, technically, he wasn't. He was a Johnson guy.

"If you have a player who scores 23 one game and three the next, they'll talk about consistency, but there's also consistency in coaching," Jerry Hudson said in defense of his son. "Coach Williams would say Jalen was the most talented kid on the team, yet he was getting, 15, 16, 17 minutes some games. Inconsistent minutes. Maybe there was something Jalen needed to learn about the college experience that he hadn't grasped. Maybe that was what Coach Williams was trying to get across. Whatever the case, they just never really meshed."

With that sophomore season wrapped, Hudson's father came to Blacksburg, Va., and joined his son to meet with Williams about transferring.

"He was really mad," Hudson said of Williams. "I told him that I was not the kind of guy who complained for no reason, but that this was not how I planned for it to go."

With that, Hudson was back in the recruiting pool again.

One of the first to reach out was Mincy.

The Gators, in their initial season under White, were a couple weeks removed from three-game run into the NIT. They had just taken on graduate transfer Canyon Barry, who Mincy coached at College of Charleston, and instantly were interested in another guy who had a previous relationship with Mincy.This one, though, would have to sit out a year, but it would stagger the roster nicely and, eventually, provide some scoring punch

White and a couple assistants flew to Blacksburg to meet with Hudson. A few days later, White came a second time on his own.

"That really impressed Jalen," Jerry Hudson said. "He felt a connection with Coach White he hadn't really had before. He felt that this was someone who really wanted him."

But so did Texas and Shaka Smart, who recruited Hudson heavily while at VCU. And so did Arkansas and Mike Anderson.

Excited to announce that I will be finishing my college career at The University of Florida! #Gators ????
— Jalen Hudson (@JalenHudson5) May 11, 2016

As Hudson felt himself being drawn more and more toward the Gators, he picked up the phone and called a fellow Richmond D-1 basketball product he knew from their days on the AAU circuit. Hudson, like the ACC All-Academic selection he was, was doing his homework.

He had some questions for UF forward Devin Robinson. Specifically about White.

"I didn't ask him how he got along with Mike White or how Mike White used him. It wasn't about any of that," Hudson said. "I wanted to know what kind of guy Mike White was. Mike White, the person. I wanted to know about his family, what he was like day to day, what he was like away from basketball. It was important to me."

He signed with UF on May 11, 2016, and showed up some six weeks later for Summer "B" semester.

"Right away, it was like a light went on," Hudson said. "The grass was greener."

THE REAL THING

Other than Robinson, no UF player knew anything of Hudson when he arrived in Gainesville and became a fixture at the basketball complex. Their first exposure to his skills set was with their first pick-up game.

Initial impressions?

"He was really good," junior center Kevarrius Hayes recalled.

As for Chiozza?

"He sure shoots a lot," he said. "But he was making them, so I didn't say anything."

The summer season of individual instruction and weight-lifting (the dreaded "Strongman" program, led by strength/conditioning coordinator Preston Greene) soon turned to preseason workouts. Then came fall practice, which gave way to the regular season, which tipped off what seemed like an interminable visit to the basketball waiting room.

"I know how hard it was for him last year because he watched how good that team was and how smart the coach was and thought, 'Wow, this is even better than I thought,' " Jerry Hudson said. "It was the first time in 12 years he couldn't play organized basketball, and all I could do was keep telling him was that it would be worth it."

Even when the Gators' 2016-17 season came to end, the notion that Hudson was now on to the next chapter of his basketball life was not something he was ready to accept.

"No, because it was right into offseason conditioning again, 'Strongman,' pickup and everything I had done before," he said. "It wasn't until we had that first [team] meeting, with all the new guys here, and Coach White standing in front and talking to us about everything he expected from us … that's when it felt real."

The preseason games the last couple weeks, when Hudson led the team in scoring at 16.3 points on 47-percent shooting and 57 percent from the 3-point line, were merely a tease.

Imagine how real it will feel Monday night when Hudson strolls into the O'Dome and he launches that first feathery, effortless-like jumper (the one with the funky sideway rotation). Or hard-drives the lane and finishes with either a soft floater or violent dunk, courtesy of that 39 1/2-inch vertical.

Come what may (and 19 months later), everything counts now.

In the run-up to it all, Mincy has issued Hudson a challenge.

"He's one of the guys on our team you never have to worry about," Mincy said. "He's so good at everything he does in life — good person, good student, good athlete — that I've told him it's time to be great at something. Be great at this."

Make it worth the wait.

"Everyone on our team, we all get along and we all have the mindset to get better every day," Hudson said. "I don't see any negatives here. I'm excited. It's going to be fun."

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Worth the Wait: For Jalen Hudson, It's About to Get Real Again

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