Nearly a decade after Wichita State offered, Jahari Long is finally a Shocker
Nearly a decade before Jahari Long committed to Wichita State, he walked into Koch Arena for the first time as a teenager and felt like he had stepped into a different world.
Long had never been to a college basketball game before. He was just a sophomore in high school riding up to Wichita with his AAU coach, former Shocker standout P.J. Couisnard, for a game against Illinois State on Feb. 4, 2017. He remembers the sold-out building, the noise from all 10,506 fans packed inside and the way Wichita State steamrolled the Redbirds in an 86-45 win.
But the moment that stuck with him most came away from the court.
At halftime, Couisnard brought Long and a few teammates into the Champions Club. The second they walked in, Long saw firsthand what Couisnard meant to Wichita State.
“As soon as we walked in, the fans all went ‘Cooooz!’” Long recalled. “I was just thinking, ‘Man, this is crazy to me. P.J. is a legend here. I want to do something like that.’”
Long never forgot it.
Now, nearly nine years later, he is finally getting his chance.
Long, the veteran guard who committed to Wichita State out of the transfer portal on Tuesday morning, is heading to Koch Arena for the last stop of one of the most winding journeys in college basketball. By the time next season rolls around, Long will be 25 years old and entering his seventh season of college basketball. What makes the story even more remarkable is that WSU was the first Division I program to offer him a scholarship back in the summer of 2017.
That offer came after another trip to Wichita.
Later that summer, Couisnard again drove Long and some of his Cooz Elite teammates to Wichita State for an elite camp run by Gregg Marshall’s staff. Long played well enough that then-assistant Kyle Lindsted extended his first Division I offer.
It took almost a full decade, but Long eventually found his way back to the place where his Division I dream truly began.
“Man, it really is like a full-circle moment,” Long said.
That full-circle twist only hits harder when you consider how much has happened in between.
Long started his career at Seton Hall in the 2020-21 season, the year college basketball operated under COVID protocols and uncertainty. Every player who competed that season received a blanket extra year of eligibility because of the pandemic, which became the first piece in how Long’s career stretched this far.
The second piece came the following year. Long entered the 2021-22 season with torn cartilage in his right knee at Seton Hall and tried to play through it, but after just five games he needed surgery and was granted a medical redshirt.
He then transferred to Maryland and played two full seasons from 2022-24, appearing to regain his footing before another cruel break interrupted his career. In the first game of the 2024 Big Ten tournament, Long tore his ACL, costing him the entire 2024-25 season and leading to a second medical redshirt.
So the math on his unusually long career is actually straightforward: one COVID waiver, plus two medical redshirts.
That is how Long is now set to begin a seventh college season and why Wichita State is welcoming a player who has lived just about every twist the sport can throw at somebody.
Now he hopes Wichita State will be the place where all of that experience finally pays off at the highest level.
Long has already been to the NCAA Tournament three times in his career. He is not coming to Wichita just to make another appearance. He is coming to help drag the program back to March for the first time since 2021 and, in his mind, do more than simply show up.
“This is my last year, so I want to win as much as possible,” Long said. “I want to get back to the NCAA Tournament and really achieve something in the NCAA Tournament. I’m thinking Sweet 16 being the bare minimum. I want to win a conference championship. I think we can.”
That kind of ambition is part of what makes Long such an intriguing portal addition for Paul Mills.
On the court, Long gives WSU exactly what it needed more of: proven playmaking, ball-handling and perimeter shot creation from a veteran guard with size and experience. He is coming off a career-best season at George Mason, where he started all 33 games for a 23-win team and averaged 12.2 points and 4.0 assists in 33.8 minutes per game. He did it efficiently, too, shooting 45.4% from the field, 37.7% from 3-point range and 82.6% at the free throw line.
Long believes that versatility is one of his biggest strengths.
“I’m a player who is going to do whatever it takes to win,” Long said. “If the game requires me to facilitate, then I’ll do that. If the game requires me to score more, then that’s what I’ll do.”
For a Wichita State roster that is starting to take on more shape and balance in the portal, Long looks like a natural fit.
The Shockers can go smaller and more skilled with multiple ball-handlers and shooters on the floor at once. They can still lean into size and physicality with T.J. Williams, Dillon Battie and Will Berg attacking the offensive glass. They can play Jordan Frison as the primary table-setter, use Mike Gray Jr. more off the ball and slot Long in as the bigger guard who can connect lineups, settle possessions and toggle between scoring and facilitating.
However Mills arranges the pieces, Long adds another layer of offensive flexibility.
Yet Long said the fit with Wichita State was about more than scheme.
His long-standing relationship with Couisnard, now an assistant at WSU, mattered. So did the trust that came with it. But Long also said he had been interested in Mills well before this recruitment ever started.
“I’ve actually been following (Mills) since he was at Oral Roberts,” Long said. “I really love how much freedom that his guards play with. I had a lot of respect for his system.”
That combination turned Wichita State into a powerful draw. Long already liked the way Mills coached guards. He already knew and trusted Couisnard. And once he entered the portal, the Shockers wasted no time making him feel wanted.
According to Long, Mills told him WSU was constantly refreshing the portal while waiting for his name to appear. The Shockers were one of the first programs to reach out and it quickly became obvious the mutual interest was serious.
Long ultimately chose Wichita State over USC, among other interest.
“I just trust this coaching staff,” Long said. “I trust P.J. and I trust coach Mills. I trust them more than I think I would’ve trusted any other situation.”
Nearly 10 years ago, he sat in Koch Arena as a teenager, wide-eyed at the atmosphere and imagining what it might feel like to matter in a place like that. He watched fans shower his coach with love and wondered if someday he could leave that kind of mark somewhere, too.
He could not have known then that the journey would take seven college seasons, three schools, one COVID waiver, two medical redshirts and enough setbacks to derail most careers.
But it led him back to Wichita all the same.
And now the first school to ever believe in him is finally the one that gets the last year of his career.
This story was originally published April 14, 2026 at 1:10 PM.
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