By BAKER ELLIS / Sports Editor

VINCENT – On April 13, EJ Datcher made history at Vincent Middle High School as the first student-athlete in the history of the school to accept an athletic scholarship offer from a Division I program when he signed his letter of intent to play basketball at Mississippi State University.

“EJ is the first Division I player that we’ve had here in any sport, and as far as we know, the first person that’s signed in the SEC probably going back to the seventies,” Vincent head basketball coach John Hadder said at the ceremony.

Datcher has been a mainstay in the Vincent program for years, helping to establish the Yellow Jackets as the most consistent program in the county during his high school tenure. While his signing is the exclamation point on a dominant prep career, there was a time when the 6-foot-9-inch post player’s odds to play Division I ball were slim. He saw his recruitment stock take a sharp decline when he injured his knee during his junior season, forcing him to miss the second half of that season and the ensuing summer AAU circuit. The buzz that had begun to build around the big man from the small school began to fade, and Datcher had to play his way back into the conversations of the big programs during his senior season.

Mississippi State was one of the first big programs to start sniffing around the Vincent gym after Datcher had sufficiently recovered from his knee injury. Alabama followed suite soon after, and after a season-long recruiting saga, the Bulldogs finally offered Datcher a spot in their burgeoning incoming freshman class that is currently ranked fifth in the country by ESPN.com, and became the seventh 2016 commit on Feb. 29.

“Last year there were 541,000 high school basketball players in the country,” Hadder said at the ceremony. “Of those, three percent signed a basketball scholarship. Three percent of 541,000 kids. So what he is doing here today is not something that is just normal. It’s something that only a few people achieve. It’s not easy.”

Datcher averaged a double-double during his senior season for the Yellow Jackets, scoring just less than 15 points and accumulating roughly 11 boards per game, and led Vincent back to the 2A Sweet Sixteen. He thanked his parents and everyone gathered at the ceremony for the part they have played in helping him to reach this point in his basketball career.

Datcher will head to Starkville after his high school graduation and will begin offseason workouts with the basketball team.