On Tuesday, Pitt head coach Jeff Capel extended an offer to class-of-2023 point guard prospect Jaland Lowe, a player, and a person, that he has been quite familiar with for a long time now.
“He called me, I was just chilling,” Lowe told Pittsburgh Sports Now on Tuesday night. “We talked about how he never expected to see this moment. He used to see me as a kid, when John Lucas and my dad [Marland Lowe]. He never thought he’d be recruiting me one day, so he just told me about that. I remember when he was at Duke and I was in middle school, and he let me visit the place at Duke. Now, he saw me playing AAU. He’s just proud of me. He said he liked the way I play, and he offered me.”
Lowe’s father, Marland Lowe, is a well-known figure in the grassroots basketball world. Ever since Lowe and Capel developed that relationship years back, Jaland, the coaches son, has been in the back of Capel’s mind. And for Jaland, Capel has been too.
“Whenever I heard of Pitt, I always thought of Coach Capel,” he said.
Lowe is a 6-foot-1 guard out of Missouri City, Texas, who competes for Thurgood Marshall High School as well as Houston Hoops on the Nike EYBL Circuit. He is coming off a special performance this past week at Nike’s Peach Jam event, earning First Team All-Tournament honors according to The Circuit. At Peach Jam, the rising senior averaged 17.7 points per game, 4.7 assists per game, and 1.6 steals per game for his team.
“I think I’m just a true point guard,” he said about his skill set. “I have a real good feel for the game. I play really hard and really competitive. I play in a well-mannered and a good pace.”
Lowe is the lone player on Pitt’s 2023 board out of the state of Texas. He has already visited schools in the region such as Rice and Oklahoma State, and has a visit to SMU scheduled for Wednesday. However, location is not the biggest of deals to him.
“I’m not worried about it too much,” he said. “It’s really just, wherever the best fit is at is where I’ll go. It’s never really been that I want to go close to home or I want to go far from home. I’m just going to go where the best fit is.”
Lowe included that visiting Pitt in the future is “definitely an option” for him. And as for a commitment date, Lowe is not quite in a rush to choose his next home.
“I don’t have a deadline but whenever I feel most comfortable,” he said. “It can range really anywhere. Me personally, I want to say towards maybe mid basketball season, maybe towards November, December, January. If it takes that long. But if it is before then, that would be great. But I don’t really plan on doing it any time soon.”
