New Fordham coach Tom Pecora has cornered the market on New York City guards.
John F. Kennedy standout Jeffrey Short became the latest local to join the Rams, verbally committing Wednesday night. He joins former Boys & Girls star Lamount Samuell Jr., who spent a postgraduate year at Notre Dame Prep (Mass.), Bishop Loughlin’s Branden Frazier and Newburgh Free Academy guard Devon (Fatty) McMillan, formerly of Lincoln.
“They showed me love,” Short told The Post. “It’s not only on the court, it’s about after I leave. Coach Pecora also was there for me, it didn’t matter if I played good, if I played bad. He was the only coach that stayed with me. It’s going to be good to go to Fordham.”
Short, a 6-foot-4, versatile wing, isn’t worried about Fordham’s recent woes: a 5-51 record the last two years and a winless season last year in the Atlantic 10. He sees a bright future with Pecora, a proven winner who also recruited him when he was the Hofstra coach and has already built a solid recruiting class.
“I know the players that are coming in now are capable of changing the system around,” Short said. “I won’t look back. I look at what we have now.”
Short has qualified academically, but is waiting on a SAT score. He may need to go to prep school for a year, he said, but the talented wing has his mind made up on Fordham. He wanted to get the decision over with.
“He was tired of everybody calling and asking what he was going to do,” Kennedy assistant coach Star Jones said. “He didn’t want the pressure of people bothering him.”
The Post’s All-Bronx Player of the Year and a first team All-City selection, Short averaged 28 points, 14 rebounds and just over five assists per game for JFK last year, leading the Knights to a second-place finish in Bronx AA.
His stock has skyrocketed in the last year. As a junior, he was on a Kennedy team that reached the PSAL Class AA title game, but he was merely a spot-up shooter.
This winter, he became the Knights’ go-to guy, their leading scorer, rebounder and distributor. Short also helped the New York Panthers win a record 17th title at the iS8 Nike Spring League, where he garnered second-team honors.
His greatest strides, however, came off the court. Short barely passed his classes as a freshman and sophomore at Kennedy, but was unable to play on the basketball team because it had higher standards. He often watched college basketball in his free time, which served as motivation.
“I was thinking that could be me one day playing, but not the way I was treating my first two years [in the classroom],” he recalled. “I had to change, get more mature.”
He took summer classes and raised his grades enough to make the team as a junior and eventually broke into the starting lineup. Short saw how former Kennedy start Dwight Hardy and Kadeem Nicholas didn’t take school seriously enough, and had to go to junior college. He didn’t want that.
“He learned from their mistakes,” Jones said. “Little things became big things. That’s one thing I’m proud of.”