When Jakob Junis was a freshman at Rock Falls High School, he won a starting role on the varsity basketball team. In a town of 10,000 or so, 110 miles west of Chicago, this classified as major news.
The basketball program in Rock Falls was a respected power in the world of small-town Illinois hoops, the kind of place that competed for championships. In years of coaching at the high school level, then-Rock Falls coach Mike Winters had promoted just one other freshman to the varsity level.
But even then, Winters says, there was always something different about Junis.