East Carolina’s men’s basketball team will take the court this coming Monday with one of the top players in college hoops on its side. Senior guard RJ Felton was tabbed a Top 100 player nationally by ESPN earlier this week. Felton, ranked 95th on the list, turned down opportunities to enter the transfer portal and returned to ECU for his final season of eligibility as the team’s leading scorer, averaging 17.3 points and 6.0 rebounds per game as a junior.
Felton returns to the Pirates this season as a member of the 1,000-point club, having racked up 1,154 career points in three seasons. He’s averaged double figures each of the last two years for the Pirates since Michael Schwartz took over as head coach.
“One of the more unheralded players on this list, Felton is a preseason All-AAC selection who scored in double figures in each of his final 25 games last season,” wrote ESPN’s Jeff Borzello and Myron Medcalf. “He hit 20-plus points in 10 games, including back-to-back 30-point efforts in November. Felton is a terrific rebounder for his size who continues to make strides as a 3-point shooter.”
Felton was joined by his younger brother, Ladontae Felton, a freshman guard from South Carolina, on the ECU roster heading into this season. RJ was also awarded with a six-figure NIL deal courtesy of Team Boneyard worth more than $100,000, according to sources familiar with the situation, to keep him on board the Pirate ship.
Felton has improved in almost every statistic throughout his time with the Pirates. He averaged 5.1 points per game as a freshman with 1.6 boards per contest, in the final year of the Joe Dooley era. He became a team leader as a sophomore in 2022-23, averaging 13.8 points and 4.5 rebounds per game.
The 6-foot-3, 214-pounder was originally a Dooley signee out of Aiken High School in Aiken, South Carolina. He’s known for his tremendous athleticism and physicality, along with a relentless effort on both ends of the floor. Felton had 59 steals a season ago along with 21 blocks, setting a career-high in both categories. He also shot a career-best 43.1 percent from the floor, and 35.5 percent from 3-point range, as well as 77.8 percent from the charity stripe.
ECU has yet to have a winning season with Felton with the program, but the Pirates are determined to try and change that in 2024-25. They will open their season on Nov. 4 against North Carolina Wesleyan inside Minges Coliseum. Schwartz added a handful of notable transfers this offseason, including Temple’s Jordan Riley, Gardner-Webb’s Julien Soumaoro, UCF’s CJ Walker, and St. Bonaventure’s Yann Farell.
Felton is joined on the Top 100 list by three other fellow American Athletic Conference players in PJ Haggerty of Memphis, Tyrese Hunter of Memphis, and Yaxel Lendeborg of UAB.
