Top 150 recruit Jrob Croy follows Bennett to ASU, flips his pledge from St. Mary’s

Well, that didn’t take long. Only one day after Randy Bennett accepted Arizona State’s offer to be its new head basketball coach, 6-foot-7 forward Jrob Croy switched his commitment from Bennet’s previous employer, St. Mary’s, and became the first pledge under the new Sun Devils’ head coach.

“To be honest, it was pretty easy (decision),” Croy told Devils Digest. “I feel like my loyalties are with Coach Bennett, and this is just an incredible opportunity to go play in the Big 12 and try and do something special. I’ve known Coach Bennett for a long time. My dad (Cal Baptist Head coach Rick Croy) worked under him for a while (at St. Mary’s), so I’ve had a strong relationship with him, and he recruited me very hard to St. Mary’s.

“He’s someone who just really values who I am as a player, not only just what I do on the court in terms of my shooting ability and passing ability, but just who I am as a leader and a competitor. He wants me to come in and be one of the guys to set the standard and the culture of the program.”

Croy, who was a standout at Riverside (Calif.) Polytechnic is a Rivals150 2026 recruit who is also ranked Top 50 among small forwards in his class and Top 25 in California. Aside from St. Mary’s, he officially visited Gonzaga and Stanford during the recruiting process.

“Coach Bennett sees him as a guy who can do it all,” Croy described, “someone that can shoot the ball really well and is a competitor and will be one of the leaders. I think that’s really important when building a program, having players who are big locker room guys and who are leaders on the court.

“Coach Bennett values guys with high IQs. When people talk about Coach Bennett’s teams, they talk about guys who are coaches on the floor, and I think that’s me. I’m someone who can really develop into another coach on the floor, someone who knows the system inside and out.”

While Croy was never recruited by ASU, he said that he had visited the Tempe campus in the past, not in a basketball trip capacity, and had made the six-hour car ride, another aspect that influenced his decision, to the Valley of the Sun quite a bit.

“I think it’s a school that’s really committed to athletics,” Croy noted, “and I think we’ve seen that with football, and then obviously with women’s basketball this past year. I know that with hiring Coach Bennett, it shows that they’re committed to wanting to win in basketball, and that excites me, because who doesn’t want to be at an institution where they’re all into winning and committed to excellence?”

The forward does plan to officially visit the Sun Devils in the upcoming weeks, make his pledge official during the signing period, which begins on April 15th, and arrive in the summer to join the team. Croy was very pragmatic when asked what his expectations were for his upcoming freshman year and the beginning of his college basketball career.

“I just want to establish who I am. I don’t want to be anyone else,” Croy described. “I’m a confident player. I know who I am, and I want to try and bring what I’ve done my whole career and try and establish that. Obviously, there are going to be new faces, but I’m gonna bring my leadership abilities, my IQ, all of that, to ultimately help the team win, and that’s the most important thing.

“So, whatever the team needs me to do, I’m going to do that.”