As Jarell Martin took a baseline pass and slammed it home for two of his 10 points in the McDonald’s All-American Game on April 3, 2013, it appeared Reggie Rankin was accurate.
“Coach Johnny Jones hit the jackpot with this local product,” Rankin, an ESPN.com basketball recruiting analyst, wrote days earlier.
Then a junior at LSU, Andre Stringer heard much of the same about his soon-to-be teammate.
“Thunderous dunks. Supreme athleticism. A knack for the ball. Explosive moves to the rim,” Stringer recalled.
Martin was the first product of Jones’ reputation as a lockdown recruiter — seen as a turning point for Tiger fans parched for success from its basketball program.
But on Tuesday night, as the LSU starting lineup was introduced against Missouri, Martin sat on the bench.
He sat and watched fellow freshman Jordan Mickey win the tipoff. Sat as LSU built a 10-4 lead. And when the Tigers grabbed their biggest first half lead at 18-10, Martin had yet to remove his warmup jacket.
It’s become the new norm for the Madison Prep product, who entered the game at the 12:03 mark in the first half.
“It was kind of weird,” Martin said. “I’ve never come off the bench in my life.”
Since suffering a high ankle sprain on his first collegiate possession in a loss against UMass on Nov. 12, Martin’s freshman campaign has been anything but the idealized picture Tiger fans painted for him.
Martin was a mainstay in the starting lineup through the Tigers’ nonconference schedule, but at a cost. He relinquished his normal position at power forward and moved out to the wing, where early season struggles were evident.
He forced shots. He turned it over. And his control issues were epitomized in his return from the ankle injury against Southeastern Louisiana, where he was out of control on two consecutive possessions as he barreled into defenders for quick charges.
But it wasn’t until after LSU’s SEC-opening loss to Tennessee that Jones moved Martin and Stringer to the bench in favor of sophomore guard Malik Morgan and senior Shavon Coleman.
For Martin, it was quite the adjustment.
Admittedly jolted, he turned to his family and trainer EJ Avery for guidance.
“When you first hear it, it’s like, ‘Wow, am I doing something wrong?’” Avery said. “We had that conversation for about three or four minutes. He expressed how he felt about it and what he was going to do moving forward.”
Specifically, Martin told Avery he’d use the move to relax and calm any nerves still lingering. It was vintage Martin, according to Avery, who watched his pupil blossom from a ninth grader who started his career at Glen Oaks.
“I didn’t let it get to me,” Martin said. “I looked past it and now I feel like it was a good thing. I started getting more comfortable with the game and everything.”
Since the move, Martin averages only 22 minutes per game, down three minutes from his previous 10 games, but has 12 points per game and averages almost six rebounds.
Beyond the jump in production, the move has more clearly defined Martin’s role as a quick, athletic player on the high post who can step out and bury mid-range jumpers.
Junior forward Johnny O’Bryant III, himself a McDonald’s All-American in 2011, faced the same high expectations as Martin when he arrived in Baton Rouge.
And through similar tribulations, O’Bryant said he learned quickly what to do with expectations.
“You’ll never be able to live up to the expectations people have because they’re always changing,” O’Bryant said. “I think you just come in, work as hard as you can, be the best you can be and at the end of the day, be happy with that.”
Avery was aware of the expectations surrounding his prized pupil, but was confident Martin’s upbringing prepared him to handle them.
Martin, who said he despises social media and only has an Instagram account he rarely uses, ignored them.
“He has humble beginnings, coming from basically nowhere, virtually unheard of,” Avery said. “He hasn’t always been popular. He’s not one to be all over the Internet, reading clippings because that’s not something he’s always been accustomed to. He focuses on the right things.”
After Martin entered the game at the 12:03 mark in Tuesday’s win against Missouri, he immediately turned the ball over. He was later saddled with foul trouble, committing two in a span of 30 seconds in the second half to send him to the bench with four.
It wasn’t what Martin expected on the given night, nor was it what fans wanted to see from the budding star.
But Martin and Jones agreed: An LSU win like the one on Tuesday overshadows any of that.
“It’s a team thing,” Martin said. “It’s not just about me.”