A 3-star guard from the Lone Star State has accepted a scholarship offer from the University of Hawaii basketball team.
Justin Webster, a 6-foot-3 guard from the Dallas area, will enroll at UH for the July 1 start of Summer Session II.
This past season, Webster was the leader in scoring (16.2) and steals for Hargrave Military Academy, a boarding school in Chatham, Va. Rivals.com gave Webster a 3-star rating.
Webster made the decision a week after he and his family took an official recruiting trip to Hawaii. “I chose Hawaii because Coach (Eran) Ganot has a great coaching staff,” Webster said. “They’ve been to where I want to go. They’ve produced a lot of good players. They’re all about putting in the work. And that’s one thing about me. I like to work hard. … Those guys are high-character guys, and that’s what I fell in love with.”
Webster hopes to follow the path of his father, Jeff Webster, a former Oklahoma player who was named to the 1994 All-Big Eight first team. The Miami Heat selected the elder Webster in the second round (40th overall) of the 1994 NBA Draft.
“Growing up, basketball was first nature for me,” Justin Webster said. “I fell in love with it early. Ever since then, I’ve let the game bring me to places I’d never been before.”
As a member of his father’s AAU team, Webster developed into an accurate scorer on drives and shots from all distances. “He has a way to put the ball in the hole,” the elder Webster said. “He’s always been able to shoot the ball, score the ball, and play team ball. Justin is like a sponge. He’s always looking at what can help him become a better basketball player.”
Through 11th grade, Webster attended Prestonwood Christian Academy in Plano, located about 20 miles from Dallas. He decided to attend Hargrave as a senior to widen his academic and athletic experiences. Webster was the only senior on the Tigers’ post-graduate team.
“It was tough, it was a challenge,” Webster said of attending a school 1,140 miles from his family home. “Overall, it was a great experience. I feel it’s prepared me for what I have in store.”
Webster was used at the point and off guard. Hargrave teammates Mickey Pearson (TCU), Davonte Gaines (Tennessee) and Jeremiah Davenport (Cincinnati) have accepted NCAA Division I scholarships.
Webster is UH’s third scholarship player for the 2019 recruiting class. The other commits are Junior Madut, a 6-5 guard from Eastern Florida College, and former Kahuku High guard Jessiya Villa, who recently returned from a two-year church mission. Kameron Ng, a Saint Francis School graduate who was the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s 2018-19 state player of the year, is joining as a preferred walk-on.