Jack Collins’ ‘surreal’ journey from Manasquan to the Monmouth starting lineup
Jack Collins’ ‘surreal’ journey from Manasquan to the Monmouth starting lineup
After being overlooked during recruiting, Collins has emerged as a key piece of Monmouth basketball’s present and future.
WEST LONG BRANCH – Jack Collins is in demand after Monmouth’s home games. Sometimes he’ll be hanging out on the OceanFirst Bank Center court, visiting with his parents and other family members. Other times, 89 people are there to see him.
When home is just a 30-minute drive south of campus down Route 71, numbers like that enter the realm of possibility.
The Manasquan native has emerged as a key piece of Monmouth basketball’s present and future, starting for his home county’s Division I team as a freshman and helping the Hawks begin to turn their season around.
Collins told me Saturday that his family bought 89 tickets for a game earlier this season to populate a whole “Manasquan section” of supporters from his community and high school.
“It was really cool. I got this big picture, which was awesome,” Collins said. “... There’s always people texting me and my parents, texting my family to come and see a game and we’ll just get them tickets here and there. Being from Manasquan, being so close, the support is crazy. It’s honestly surreal, people coming to see me play already.”
The 6-foot-5 shooting guard had a stellar career at Manasquan High School, which included a trip to Monmouth to play in the Shore Conference championship game as a junior. While hardly his first time in the building, after coming to games as a fan growing up, it was his first time playing in the arena. He came off the bench that season and remembered scoring a quick eight points when he first entered that game.
Despite his ideal size and work ethic, getting Division I looks was a challenge. Division III schools like TCNJ were recruiting him, but Collins decided to commit to a postgrad season in 2021-22 at Phelps School in Malvern, Pa. Some D1 coaches had shown interest on the condition that they wanted to see how his prep season would go.
But before he headed across state lines, he participated in an AAU summer tournament in Atlantic City. Monmouth assistant coach Rick Callahan was in attendance.
“I think I had a game where I had five 3s, the next I had six and the last game I had seven 3s,” Collins said. “So I played really well, I defended pretty well. Coach ended up reaching out and I was already going to prep school then, so I end up committing in like late August when I was already going to do a whole year of prep.
“I just decided this was a better fit than anything I was gonna see in the future. I really liked Monmouth and the coaches and this whole environment. So I thought it was a good fit, and I went with it.”
According to the Asbury Park Press, Collins is just the fourth true freshman to start his first game at Monmouth in King Rice’s 12-year tenure.
With the Hawks’ treacherous start to the season, Collins had a rough go of it at first. In his collegiate debut at Seton Hall, he missed his first six shots, all of them beyond the arc, and finished with two points, 0-for-8 from three, with four fouls and three turnovers.
Cold spells don’t discourage Collins, though. After Monmouth visited Virginia and Illinois, two more tournament-quality teams, they had a trip to Syracuse slated for Dec. 12. Collins poured in five 3-pointers at the building formerly known as the Carrier Dome, scoring a team-high 20 to keep the Hawks competitive for the first 30 minutes of an 86-71 loss.
“It’s just a different step up playing with all these athletic guys and playing high majors early in the season was definitely a difficult throw into your freshman year,” Collins said. “Being able to play Seton Hall, Illinois, all those schools when we first came out was hard, and it was hard for our team especially. Just being able to be more consistent throughout, like our shots, playing defense. I try to take a lot of pride in defense.”
Indeed, Collins isn’t chucking up shots and neglecting the rest of the game. He’s aggressive and focused on D, flying into passing lanes and diving for loose rebounds. In perhaps the biggest sign of how much Rice and the staff trust him, Collins is frequently assigned to defend the other team’s best player.
Against Hofstra on Saturday, that was Aaron Estrada, a Woodbury, N.J. native and the reigning Colonial Athletic Association Player of the Year. After stops at Saint Peter’s and Oregon, the NBA prospect has found his home at Hofstra the past two years, helping the Pride tie Charleston for the CAA lead. The three-level scorer averages 20.9 points, 5.5 rebounds and 4.2 assists per game.
Collins and Tahron Allen split time guarding Estrada and held him to just 13 points on 5-of-13 shooting with a season-high-tying seven turnovers.
Hofstra steamrolled Monmouth anyway, 86-57, with Rice afterwards expressing frustration over his team’s lack of readiness to play in the first half. There was one player exempt from that.
“I told them at halftime, ‘Jack’s competing. Anybody else want to raise their hand that’s really competing harder than the other team?’” Rice said. “And nobody raised their hand today because they knew what was happening. Jack Collins is a stud. You don’t ever have to worry about what you get from him.”
Collins only scored six points against Hofstra, without a 3-pointer, but he posted five rebounds, four assists and one devastating block of Warren Williams, a forward with a four-inch height advantage.
“I wish we had more kids like Jack Collins in the world. Not at Monmouth, just in the world,” Rice said. “Jack Collins could play anywhere in the country for the reasons you just said. He’s tougher than every kid I’ve ever had, and I’ve had some tough kids here.”
The Hawks came ready to play two days later. They completed a season sweep of North Carolina A&T with an 85-71 victory on Monday, the most they’ve scored all season, to win for the fifth time in six games following their ugly 1-20 start.
Collins’ shooting stroke returned, as he buried 5 of 11 3-pointers for a season-high 22 points, plus four rebounds, three assists and two steals. Already a two-time CAA Rookie of the Week, he got a head start on contending for his third award.
“Coach stressed (defense) through the first 20 games even though we weren’t playing as much of it,” Collins said Saturday. “Defense is really a big key. We don’t really have so many guys that can just go and get a bucket. We have guys that can play defense and then transition into getting a bucket. Defense is really the main key on what made our run go. You start playing defense and then shots start falling. It leads into each other.”
The Hawks have just one senior on the roster. Players from their own backyard, like Collins, junior point guard Jakari Spence (Toms River) and another freshman sharpshooter named Andrew Ball (Marlton), are laying the groundwork for a 2023-24 team that could be vastly improved with some experience under their collective belts.
There Collins will be, living his dream of playing D1 ball just up the road from Manasquan.
“It’s honestly just surreal to me,” Collins said. “Like I said, when I was in high school D1 wasn’t even an option. Being able to go to prep, play well in the summer, get here, be with Coach and be with some of these guys over the summer and start to develop and play better and eventually earn a starting role, I’m just happy to do it. Every day I come out on the court, practice, game, no matter what it is, I come out and give all my effort I can and just enjoy it because it’s amazing.”
………
Hi there, hello. Thanks as always for reading. Let’s quickly clean the glass of some loose notes and observations from around N.J. hoops and get on with our Thursday.
Say this much for Seton Hall: It beat the bad teams in the Big East when the time came to do so. The Pirates barely held off Georgetown and its pesky 3-point shooting late in Tuesday’s game, winning 76-68 to avoid a potential Quadrant 4 loss that would have tanked their so-so resume. They’ve now swept St. John’s, Butler, DePaul and Georgetown, and the loss at Villanova last Saturday ranks as their only bad conference loss by process of elimination. “Obviously, you want to get the win, that’s important, but it definitely matters how you play,” Shaheen Holloway told reporters. “I didn’t like us tonight at all. I don’t understand why you’d come out like that in such an important game at home. … We gotta bring our own juice, and we just didn’t have it.”
Speaking of costly losses, though, Rutgers losing by 10 at home to Nebraska was not on anyone’s board Tuesday. It was the fourth time a team has made 12 3-pointers against RU this season, and the Scarlet Knights are 0-4 when that happens. The offense remains suspect, but the defense must uphold its end of the bargain when your one formula for winning is to keep the other team at 65 points or fewer. It’s Rutgers’ second Quadrant 3 loss of the season, joining a narrow neutral-court loss to Temple without Caleb McConnell or Paul Mulcahy. “It’s on me,” Steve Pikiell said. “Very disappointed in how we defended. I gotta do a better job and I gotta make sure we get back to playing the kind of defense that we need to play in a great league against some really good shooting teams.”
Periodic check-in on Rutgers freshman Kaylene Smikle: 21 points, seven rebounds and five steals last night in the Scarlet Knights’ 62-48 win over Northwestern. She’s averaging 17.6 ppg, ninth in a conference that features stars like Caitlin Clark, Mackenzie Holmes, Diamond Miller and Taylor Mikesell. She’s also in a virtual tie for third in the Big Ten at 2.1 steals per game. Smikle should be in the running for Big Ten Freshman of the Year. As for the team, RU moved to 5-10 in the Big Ten and could muscle its way to as high as the eighth seed for the conference tournament with three games remaining. The Scarlet Knights forced a whopping 28 turnovers against Northwestern and won the rebounding battle thanks to Chyna Cornwell’s career-high 17.