Jaylen Brantley had kept the secret for a couple of weeks, not telling any of his future teammates at Maryland or even men’s basketball coach Mark Turgeon. The secret was about Diamond Stone.
Before Stone told his parents, the Terps coaches and ultimately the college basketball world Friday night, he had told Brantley that he would be joining him in College Park next season.
“Me and him talk almost every day,” Brantley said Saturday from Odessa, Texas, where he played this season at Odessa College, a junior college. “He texted me one day two weeks ago saying that Maryland was the best fit for him. He wanted to keep it between us until his season was over.”
The relationship between Brantley, a 5-foot-11 point guard, and Stone, a five-star recruit ranked the No. 2 center in the country, began when the two spent the weekend together in October during their official visits to Maryland.
Brantley, who would commit soon afterward, said their relationship was built on friendship, not simply on basketball.
“I knew he had a lot of offers. I wasn’t really trying to burden him,” Brantley said. “We just started talking about the visit more and more, talking about how we think we could play with each other, stuff like that.”
On Feb. 24, when Maryland beat Wisconsin — the school that likely finished second for Stone, who is from Milwaukee — Brantley tweeted about it. Stone, who was not available to comment, retweeted what Brantley had posted.
Brantley said the success the Terps had this season and their expectations for next season, when 6-9 forward Robert Carter Jr. becomes eligible, intrigued Stone.
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“He knows Maryland’s going to have a really good team, and he just wants to be a part of that,” said Brantley, who averaged 15 points and five assists a game this season.
Brantley is expected to play both point guard and shooting guard for the Terps next season, playing behind Melo Trimble and competing with Dion Wiley and Jared Nickens — and maybe a fifth-year senior transfer, given Turgeon’s history — for time on the court.
“I talk to Jared a lot. I talked to Melo the day after they lost [to West Virginia]. I talked to Rob [Carter] a few times,” Brantley said. “I feel like everyone is like a family out there.”