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| Enoch Hood is one of six transfer players who have signed to North Carolina Central. |
Coming off its best basketball season since moving to Division I in 2007, North Carolina Central announced it has added six new players on Monday. Three of those players will be eligible to suit up for the Eagles next fall, while three others will have to sit out as traditional Division I transfers.
Headlining the group of players who will participate next season is Queens, NY native Jordan Parks. The 6’7 forward averaged 10 points per game on a College of Central Florida team that won a National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) Championship last season. It looks like he will step into the role of frontcourt scorer vacated by the transfer of former All-MEAC forward Stanton Kidd.
Another addition to the frontcourt for NCCU is forward Ramon Eaton. The 6’8 Sacramento California product spent his freshman season at Pepperdine before transferring to New Mexico Junior College, where he averaged 5 points and 3.6 rebounds per game. He is an athletic big-man that should add some much needed frontcourt presence to NCCU.
The Eagles also secured the services of Raleigh native Reggie Groves. The 6’2 guard is a graduate of Canisius College in New York, where he averaged 3 points per game in 13 minutes last season. This will not be his first time playing for coach Moton as he previously played for him at Sanderson High School in Raleigh. Groves will be allowed to play as a redshirt-senior.
Two of the three traditional Division I transfers, Jamal Ferguson and Enoch Hood, hail from the heart of MEAC territory: Norfolk, Virginia.
Hood spent his first two seasons at James Madison University. The 6’9, 215 pound big man averaged three points per game in limited minutes at JMU, but it sounds like Moton has got big plans for him.
“His ability to play above the rim, block shots, and rebounds should have a profound impact on our program,” Moton said in an NCCU release. “He’s a super young man who competed in the highly successful Boo Williams program growing up with a ton of character.”
Ferguson comes to NCCU by way of Marquette, where he played against his future team last season. The 6’5 guard averaged 1.1 point per game last season. Ferguson is a slasher who knows how to get to the rim.
Rounding out the group of nesting Eagles is 6’11 center Nate Maxey. The Sacramento, CA native blocked a school record 57 shots for Texas A&M Corpus Christi last season while averaging 4.5 points and 2.9 rebounds per game.
Four seasons into his college coaching career, Moton has shown a knack for finding talented players in the recycling bins of college basketball and turning them into solid contributors. Two of the team’s three leading scorers last season, Kidd and forward Ray Willis, were transfers. If he can do that with a few of the guys on this list, NCCU should be in the thick of the MEAC race for years to come.