Jaylen Brantley had kept the secret for a couple of weeks, not telling any of his future teammates at Maryland or even men's basketball coach Mark Turgeon. The secret was about Diamond Stone.
Before Stone told his parents, the Terps coaches and ultimately the college basketball world Friday night, he had told Brantley that he would be joining him in College Park next season.
"Me and him talk almost every day," Brantley said Saturday from Odessa, Texas, where he played this season at Odessa College, a junior college. "He texted me one day two weeks ago saying that Maryland was the best fit for him. He wanted to keep it between us until his season was over."
The relationship between Brantley, a 5-foot-11 point guard, and Stone, a five-star recruit ranked the No. 2 center in the country, began when the two spent the weekend together in October during their official visits to Maryland.
Brantley, who would commit soon afterward, said their relationship was built on friendship, not simply on basketball.
"I knew he had a lot of offers. I wasn't really trying to burden him," Brantley said. "We just started talking about the visit more and more, talking about how we think we could play with each other, stuff like that."