Demetrius Jackson Found A Home, And Himself, At Notre Dame

This feature is part of VICE Sports' March Madness coverage.

Michael Whitfield had one of the best seats in Philadelphia's Wells Fargo Center for Sunday night's NCAA tournament East regional final between Notre Dame and North Carolina. He was in the front row of section 112, right across from North Carolina's bench. He wasn't rooting for the Tar Heels.

Whitfield's allegiances weren't hard to miss, and they were easy to understand considering his relationship with Notre Dame junior point guard Demetrius Jackson. Over a long-sleeved gray shirt, Whitfield wore a gold and green Notre Dame replica jersey; Jackson's number 11 was stitched across the front and back. He watched as the Irish's season ended with an 88-74 loss, although no one could blame either number 11 for the defeat.

Jackson finished with a game-high 26 points and sparked a second-half rally that gave Notre Dame a brief lead before the Tar Heels regrouped with a run of their own to advance to the 19th Final Four in program history. After the game, a distraught Jackson walked through the tunnel to the Irish's locker room with his head down, past arena officials hustling a ladder onto the court so that North Carolina could cut down the nets.

It was a disappointing finish, but given where Jackson started and what he's faced, being there at all was an accomplishment. If it wasn't for a decision that Whitfield's family made more than seven years ago, Jackson may never have attended Notre Dame, let alone become an elite college player and top-tier NBA prospect.

Whitfield and Jackson, whose birthdays are only a week apart, met as seventh graders when they were teammates and starters on the Midwest Basketball Academy AAU team, and soon became close friends. Jackson was living with a foster family at the time, and traveled with the Whitfields to games and tournaments and spent weekends at their home in Mishawaka, Indiana.

As the two grew closer, Jackson confided that he didn't fit in well with his foster family. A few days before Christmas in 2008, Whitfield asked his parents, Dave and Beth, if they could bring in Jackson as a foster child. "I thought of him as a brother," Michael Whitfield told VICE Sports about an hour before Sunday's game. "I kind of wanted just to give him every opportunity to be able to succeed that I was given by my parents."

The Whitfields already had five children who were nine years apart, but they had come to love Jackson as one of their own. After completing 30 hours of mandatory parenting and first aid classes and obtaining the necessary licenses, Jackson moved in with the Whitfields in June 2009. "The house was crazy already, anyway," Beth Whitfield told VICE Sports. "It was just one more mouth to feed."

That fall, Jackson and Michael Whitfield enrolled at Marian High School, a local Catholic school that Dave and Beth Whitfield had both attended. They were teammates on the football and basketball teams, and shared a bedroom with Whitfield's two younger brothers. They were pretty much inseparable.

"That became the perfect fit," Rod Creech, their AAU coach, told VICE Sports. "You have a great friend and a great bond. The family, Dave and Beth, were just amazing people. To be able to put those things together, it was kind of a meant-to-be thing, I believe."

As a sophomore at Marian, which is 15 minutes from Notre Dame's campus, Jackson quit football to concentrate full-time on basketball. By then, Notre Dame basketball coach Mike Brey and assistant coach Anthony Solomon had begun pursuing Jackson. Solomon attended numerous Marian practices and games, but he understood an overly aggressive approach wouldn't work with Jackson. "We didn't just knock his door down every day," Solomon told VICE Sports. "He likes his space. We gave him his space. We were around, but we didn't just bombard him."

Jackson emerged as a top-25 national recruit, and ended up receiving scholarship offers from Kansas, Louisville, and other top programs. But while he had the talent to go anywhere, Jackson didn't want to go far—it was important to him that he remain close to the Whitfields as well as Creech, his wife, and their four children. Jackson's biological mother and two older brothers lived nearby, too, and were important factors in his decision to attend Notre Dame. "I just had a great support group with my foster family," Jackson said. "I just felt like I had everybody behind me."

During Jackson's freshman season, Notre Dame went 15-17. He split time between the starting lineup and a reserve role, missed two games because of an academic suspension and often blamed himself for minor errors. "I put all the pressure on myself to just kind of be the best I can be," Jackson said.

"I told him there's only one perfect person," Solomon said. "He can make a couple of mistakes and we'll be alright."

By last season, Jackson had become less of a perfectionist and had gotten better at letting bad sequences pass without affecting his play. That Irish team featured two NBA draft picks in Jerian Grant and Pat Connaughton and advanced to the Elite Eight for the first time in 26 years, where they lost to undefeated Kentucky 68-66. With Grant and Connaughton gone, Jackson became the focal point of the offense and a team captain, and his game blossomed with the additional responsibility. Jackson averaged a team-high 15.8 points and 4.7 assists per game, and while his shooting numbers (45.1 percent overall and 33.1 percent on three-pointers) and offensive rating (117.9) were down from last season, he looked very much like a star with a knack for the moment.

Jackson showed his maturity by bouncing back from a poor start in the late stages of Notre Dame's Sweet 16 game against Wisconsin on Friday night. After missing nine of his first 10 shots, Jackson made a layup with 10:10 remaining that tied the score at 34-all. Eighty seconds later, he connected on two free throws to put Notre Dame ahead 38-37, the team's first lead since early in the first half.

The best was yet to come. With the Irish trailing 56-53 with 19 seconds remaining, Jackson scored on a layup, then stole the ball from Wisconsin's Nigel Hayes and converted another for a one-point advantage. Jackson had another steal with four seconds remaining, drew a foul and made two more free throws to give the Irish a 61-56 lead, which would hold until the buzzer sounded. "You just ride with him," Brey said. "There's where he's grown as a player. He's patient. He didn't force anything. He didn't get frustrated. He knew eventually he was gonna be able to get in there and make plays. Man, did he take over."

Jackson helped the Irish make another comeback on Sunday night. After North Carolina went ahead 51-40 early in the second half, Jackson scored on a layup, hit a three-pointer, and found Zach Auguste for an alley-oop on three consecutive possessions, sparking a 12-0 run that gave the Irish a one-point lead. The Tar Heels were playing out of their minds on Sunday, though—the team converted an implausible 72 percent of its two-point attempts—and scored the next 12 points and led by at least eight points the rest of the way.

Afterward, Jackson was asked about whether he'd return for his senior season, responding only "that's a question I'll answer at a later date." Brey told reporters that Jackson would declare for the NBA draft and participate in the combine in May but wouldn't sign with an agent, leaving him the option to come back to Notre Dame. The draft may wind up making the decision for him, though—as of Monday morning, DraftExpress.com had Jackson as the 11th pick and ESPN.com had him as the 20th.

"He's going to get better," Solomon said in Notre Dame's locker room late Sunday night. "That's the way he's built, he is about developing. That was always the thing I challenged him with, even in recruitment and after I got to know him. One of my lines I would ask him was, 'Are you getting better today? Are you getting better this week? Are you getting better this month?' He certainly has done that."

Wherever Jackson winds up next fall, he has found a home with the Whitfields. He still lives there when he's not at school and visits when he needs a break from campus life (or needs to do his laundry). The entire family drove more than 650 miles one-way from Indiana to Philadelphia for this past weekend's games, and drove to Washington, DC for the ACC tournament and to Brooklyn for the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament. Jackson's biological mother and brothers attend Notre Dame home games, too, as does Rod Creech, his AAU coach and mentor.

"He's got an incredible support group of people that love him, care about him, and just want the best for him," Creech said. "Everybody's just trying to do the right thing for him at this point. He's been a champion."