When Ian Jackson was in the seventh grade, mired in typical teenage growing pains — achy knees, dull pain down the length of his legs — he developed a temporary limp. Nothing major, and nothing that lingered, but still: a noticeable hitch in his gait.
Noticeable enough that his middle school basketball coach gave him a nickname: Captain Jack.
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“Like a pirate,” Jackson says. “So, Captain Jack Sparrow, Captain Jack.”
Jackson didn’t love the nickname at first. “I thought it was corny,” he says, “but I put it as my Instagram name, and it stuck with me.” As Jackson climbed the basketball ladder, elevating from just another aspiring hooper to his current perch — the crown jewel of North Carolina’s incoming freshman class — that nickname never faded. And this point, given his on-court fame and 190,000 Instagram followers, it doesn’t figure to. “I guess,” he says, “that’s it now.”
So Jackson has leaned into the moniker. It is, for example, also the name of his Overtime-sponsored podcast. (Jackson transferred to Our Savior Lutheran, a member of the Overtime Elite league, before his senior season of high school.) And just imagine how much pirate-themed merch he’ll sell next season in Chapel Hill — especially if he’s as good as most in the basketball industry expect him to be.
About those expectations: They certainly exist, even for a 19-year-old entering the oldest era of college basketball. But that comes with the territory when you’re as highly regarded as Jackson is. As the No. 8 player in the 2024 class, per the 247Sports Composite, Jackson will be the highest-ranked player Hubert Davis has coached in Chapel Hill, narrowly surpassing point guard Elliot Cadeau (No. 12 in 2023) and fellow incoming five-star recruit Drake Powell (No. 11 in 2024). Add Jackson to UNC’s returning backcourt — Cadeau and first-team All-America guard R.J. Davis — and you have one of the most talented perimeter trios in the country. To maximize all three players, Hubert Davis is likely to start and regularly play three guards together for the first time in his tenure.
Such are the adjustments a program makes when a player like Jackson enters the fold. At 6-foot-5 and lightning quick — Jackson describes his game as “electric” — the New York native should immediately emerge as one of the Tar Heels’ top scorers. But Jackson is only worried about one thing:
“Do as much as I can,” he says, “to win another national championship for North Carolina.”
A game Jackson played in the sixth grade made him realize how important winning is.
“We lost a game, and it tore me up. I cried. Like, it hurt me bad,” Jackson says. “That’s when I kind of understood about myself that I really want to play basketball. That loss, kind of bringing that emotion out of me, I knew that (basketball was) something that was for real for me.”
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That loss didn’t just teach Jackson that basketball was his passion; it also told him, bluntly, where he stood. “I had a lot to get better at. I had a long way to go,” he says, “and I wanted to do it.”
He responded by diving into the gym, working on the scoring and finishing skills that are now hallmarks of his game. “I feel,” Jackson says, “like I score the ball at a pretty high clip.” (One of the players he looked up to at the time? R.J. Davis, then starring at nearby Archbishop Stepinac.) Then came the growing pains, the birth of Captain Jack … and most importantly, sprouting to his current 6-foot-5 frame. MaxPreps named him National Sophomore of the Year in 2022 — which it previously awarded to current pros Andrew Wiggins, R.J. Barrett, and Jalen Green — after he averaged 19.8 points, five rebounds, and four assists for Cardinal Hayes (N.Y.), which won the Class AA state title.
Kentucky was widely considered the frontrunner in his recruitment, thanks to John Calipari’s track record of sending one-and-done stars to the NBA. Jackson surprised many by picking North Carolina, largely for one reason: Hubert Davis.
“Me and Coach Davis have a great understanding of each other,” Jackson says. “He knows what my goals are as a basketball player, what I’m striving to do, and I’ve got full trust in him that he can guide me towards those goals.”
Once Jackson made his college decision, knowing his loftier goals to become a one-and-done draft pick, he made another pivotal choice: transferring from Cardinal Hayes to Our Savior Lutheran, and joining OTE as a non-professional (to maintain his eligibility).
“I just wanted to get as ready as I can for college,” Jackson says. “I felt like OTE was the closest thing I can match right now to college, that can match it on a physicality standpoint, a development standpoint, things like that.”
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At OTE, not only was Jackson facing the best competition of his high school career — the league had two other McDonald’s All-Americans this season, Karter Knox (Arkansas) and John Bol (Ole Miss), and multiple other Division I commits — but he was the beneficiary of all OTE’s perks. Jackson already had a booming social media presence, for instance, but he gained 65,000 Instagram followers this season, largely because of Overtime’s exposure. (Those followers will directly correlate to NIL dollars next season.) He also had access, whenever he was in Atlanta at OTE’s flagship facility, to a college-level weight room and multiple high-tech practice courts. He played in televised games, traveled up and down the East Coast, and built out his website with branded merchandise.
So, as college-ready as he could be.
And while New York’s Catholic League is among the nation’s best, the competition at OTE did for Jackson what that sixth-grade loss had years before: It told him what he still needed to work on, what to hone before he gets on campus at UNC.
Getting stronger, for one. (Jackson is listed at 182 pounds on OTE’s website.) And improving his decision-making; Jackson averaged 3.1 assists per game this season … and 3.2 turnovers. Jackson is also focused on improving his jump shot — he was All-OTE first team this season despite shooting 28.8 percent from 3 — and working on scoring more efficiently.
“It just helped me be more aware of how good the game of basketball (can be), and how good players are,” Jackson says. “It just opened my eyes up to a whole different world of basketball that I don’t think I could’ve seen anywhere.”
After his OTE season, Jackson participated in several all-star games, including the McDonald’s All-American game — where he scored 21 points and almost earned MVP honors — and the Nike Hoop Summit. He’ll arrive in Chapel Hill the first week of June.
He has been talking with his future teammates — he and Cadeau grew up playing against one another on the grassroots circuit and have long dreamed of teaming up — and rehashing how the Tar Heels want to play. Jackson says he watched plenty of UNC games this season.“I feel like it was something that I needed to do,” Jackson says. “I need to have some level of understanding of what Coach Davis likes to do, and what it’s going to look like next year for me.” UNC’s roster is still incomplete — the coaching staff has three available scholarships left and needs to add at least one more rotational big — but many of its offensive concepts should accentuate Jackson’s skill set.
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“Whether it’s scoring, rebounding, defending, I just feel like me being on the floor would make a huge impact on winning,” Jackson says, “and that’s the main thing I want to do.”
As for anything else fans should expect? Pencil Jackson in for the available jersey No. 11, which has personal significance to him.
“I’m just one of one. There’s no other me,” Jackson says. “From the way I think, the way I carry myself, the way I approach the game, and where I am as a human being, I’m one of one — and I stand by that.”
(Photos: Courtesy of Overtime Elite)