Jackson hoping to finish strong with Racers
MBB: The senior guard played at UIC last season
The five seniors on Murray State’s roster have come to southwest Kentucky from all over the country. Whether it was from UC Santa Barbara, Creighton, DePaul or UIC, each of those seniors left their previous schools looking for a new basketball home. For Javon Jackson, his reason for leaving UIC wasn’t all that complicated.
“I just decided to get in the portal and look for a better opportunity,” Jackson said. “Once I did that, Coach Miller reached out and I came here on the visit. I just loved everything about it and everything Coach Miller was trying to build here.”
In his one season at UIC, Jackson was the leading scorer on a team that had their first winning season since 2020. In 59 careers games at the Division I level, Jackson’s best scoring game came back on January 15th, when he dropped 30 against the Racers in UIC’s double-overtime win in Chicago.
Here is a highlight package from that game:
Having spent a year in the Missouri Valley Conference, Jackson believes his first-hand knowledge of the league will pay dividends for him.
“It’s very important,” Jackson said. “But we’ve still got 15 new guys and a whole new roster. We still have to come in here and build a team and be ready to come out here and still win, because the Valley's not usually easy to win.”
With summer workouts officially done, the Racers will play three exhibition games over the next three days in the Bahamas as their final summer act before classes start in a few weeks. Looking back on his first few months in Murray, Jackson has liked what he’s seen from his new teammates.
“What stands out to me the most about us is how fast and up tempo we play and the size we have,” Jackson said. “I think that's one thing that's going to stand out in the Valley is the size we have. I think that's going to be great.”
With an entirely new roster, while the basketball is obviously important, building team chemistry has been a major priority during the summer. Three months to the day from the start of the 2025-26 season, Jackson believes the 15 new faces on the team have gotten very close.
“Everybody's been clicking,” Jackson said. “We've been enjoying everything. Everybody's been hanging out. (The) lake days — any and everything you could do in Kentucky, we've been doing it. Everybody's been enjoying each other.”
Murray State’s first game in The Bahamas will be Monday morning at 10:00am against the University of Calgary.
Have you seen this team in person yet?