Sheldon Jeter had no school to play for.

After confiding in a friend that he had decided to leave Vanderbilt after his freshman year, it somehow ended up on a blog that Jeter wanted to attend the University of Pittsburgh.

Angry that Jeter wouldn’t first tell his coach of his plan, Kevin Stallings, the Vanderbilt head
coach, denied Jeter’s request for transfer papers to Pitt, forcing Jeter to look for other options, Carliss Jeter, Jeter’s father said.

“I think he came back to Pitt because was homesick,” his mother, Laurie Odum said.

After being denied his transfer from Vanderbilt, he sat out a season while attending Polk State, a junior college in Florida. He transferred to Pittsburgh this fall, where he is now a redshirt sophomore. With the Panthers, Jeter now averages 2.9 points per game while shooting 42.3 percent from the field. The 6-foot-8, 225-pound small forward is adjusting to playing Division I basketball again after taking a difficult year away from the game. He’ll play a bench role as the Panthers (15-8, 4-5 Atlantic Coast) host Syracuse (15-7, 6-3) on Saturday at 4 p.m.
Jeter didn’t always want to play for Pitt. Coming out of Beaver Falls High School in Pennsylvania, he was hardly recruited by the school.

“I was like, ‘I’m right here in your backyard,’” he said. “When I didn’t get the scholarship offer, I took it offensively. There was a lot of resentment toward them.”
The day after Jeter signed with Vanderbilt, Pitt head coach Jamie Dixon called Carliss.

“If Sheldon ever needs a home,” Dixon said. “He can come back home.”

Those words stuck in Carliss’ mind. When Sheldon left Vanderbilt, Carliss knew his son could play at Pitt, but the NCAA mandated he’d have to sit out a season.

That’s when he called Matt Furjanic, his old friend and the head coach at Polk State, a junior college. He accepted Jeter and gave him a scholarship, a fortunate gesture because the family couldn’t afford school. Carliss had lost his job as a supervisor at a Youth Detention Center after the governor closed the facility.

Even though Jeter was a scholarship athlete, he decided not to expend a year of his eligibility at a JUCO. He only practiced with the team.

To transfer into Pitt as an academic junior, Jeter took six or seven classes per semester. The workload, combined with the girls’ volleyball team using the gym for four hours per night, left little on-court time for Jeter.

Schoolwork and practice consumed his daily schedule, but he’d try to sneak in a 45-minute lift as often as possible.

He attended Polk’s home games to see the team play.

“It was hard to watch. It wasn’t fun at all,” he said. “But it was a light at the end of the tunnel type thing. It never killed me to sit on the bench.”

At Vanderbilt, his parents were only able to see him play two or three times because of the 9-hour drive. His grandmother, with whom he’s very close, caught one game. It disappointed Jeter; he had grown accustomed to seeing his whole family at his high school games.

His mother Laurie would text him before each game, “Good luck, love you” as she had before every game during high school. But there was something special about seeing her there, too.

“It’s heaven for me … to be able to go up there and watch him play,” she said. “Every time his foot touches the floor of the Pete Center we’re there watching. That’s why Vanderbilt was really hard.”

Jeter’s focused on reacclimating to the pace of Division I basketball. He texts his dad daily about his playing time frustrations — Jeter averages 10.3 minutes per game this season.
When he was at Vanderbilt there was a distance between him and his family. Now, if he wants to, he vents to his dad at home. He can visit his baby niece. He can watch his younger brother play football.

“At Vanderbilt, it was basketball, basketball, basketball, basketball, basketball. At Polk, it was all basketball and school. (At Pitt), if I get overloaded, I can go home for an hour or two just to clear my head and come back to school ready,” Jeter said. “It’s better now that I’m balanced.”

Published on February 5, 2015 at 12:15 am

Contact Sam: sjfortie@syr.edu | @Sam4TR