MADISON, Wis. — Jitim Young doesn’t want to be Mr. Energy. He doesn’t want to be the only one having fun. In games and practices, he dares his teammates to match his passion for the game, urging them to drop everything else and just let go.
“You want to have fun when you’re on the court,” Young said after a 69-50 loss to Wisconsin that was anything but. “You go through life and you go through problems, when you’re on the court it seems like everything just goes away. Basketball is the perfect world, and then after the game it’s back to everything else.”
It used to be different. Back at Gordon Tech High School on Chicago’s West Side, getting hyped for practice and games came naturally. Young says he wasn’t even the most energetic guy on the squad. Players fed off one another’s fervor. And it showed.
“To me, basketball is everything. If it wasn’t for basketball, I’d probably still be on the West Side. I’ve always been around people who cared about this game. It’s in my DNA to be the player that I am and to care as much as I do. You want your teammates to have that same feeling that you have, but …” Young paused then looked down. “I just don’t know.”
When Young came to NU, he knew things would be different. It’s not every year that a public leaguer heads to Evanston for college.
For two years he struggled to find himself. Last season he spent the final minutes of close games sitting on the bench, punished for trying to do too much. Against Iowa this season, Young could barely watch from the bench as seniors Aaron Jennings and Winston Blake missed game tying 3-pointers. He would have done anything to be out there, scrapping for rebounds, chasing down loose balls and loving every second of it.
Now he’s a fixture on the floor, caroming off Wisconsin sequoias to sink a layup. After making a free throw, he pumped his fist toward the Grateful Red, Wisconsin’s tie-dyed student section, daring them to match his enthusiasm. Following an NU basket, Young growled at Wisconsin guard Devin Harris as he dribbled up court. The game was well out of reach, but Young didn’t care. He was having a ball.
Young has become the player he was tabbed to be: raw, energetic, resilient. He doesn’t care that NU is out of the game with 14 minutes left. To him, that’s 14 minutes of bliss, 14 minutes to escape it all. While his teammates are sulking on the bench, he’s jockeying for position with guys half-a-foot taller. While his teammates stand still, he cuts through the lane, claws at the ball and then gets back on defense.
Why is he so different? According to NU coach Bill Carmody, it’s where he came from.
“From day one that kid came in from Gordon Tech, and that’s the way he was,” Carmody said. “The other seniors, when they came in, they didn’t play against the same kind of competition. They played in the suburbs and there’s a difference.”
The Cats are having an identity crisis right now. They’ve had some bad luck — Vedran Vukusic’s season-ending injury was crippling. But if they want to make any sort of statement, they’ll have to heighten the energy level. They’ll have to find a way to have fun again. They’ll have to rally around the one guy who can make it happen.
Young is out on the floor, ready to roll. Right now, he’s going it alone.
