Former UCLA basketball player Jalen Hill dead at 22
By DEAN FIORESI
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LOS ANGELES, California ( KCAL/KCBS) — Former UCLA basketball player Jalen Hill has died at 22 years old.
The news was confirmed by Hill’s father via his private Instagram account on Tuesday.
While his cause of death remains unknown, Hill’s family said he was in Costa Rica when he disappeared.
Hill joined the UCLA program in 2017 before opting to retire from basketball in the middle of the 2021-22 season due to depression and anxiety.
During parts of three seasons, the 6-foot-10 forward played in 77 games, averaging 6.5 points and 6.4 rebounds.
Raised in Corona, Hill was a four star recruit at Corona Centennial High School, where he was ranked the No. 47 high school basketball player in the nation his senior year.
“He was a great basketball player, but I just loved him as a person,” Hill’s high school coach Josh Giles told The Los Angeles Times. “To hear something like this is next-level devastating.”
Hill was one of three Bruins players, along with LiAngelo Ball and Cody Riley, that were arrested for shoplifting in 2017 when the team was in Shanghai, China for a season-opening matchup against Georgia Tech. He was suspended for the entire 2017-18 season as a result.
Despite this, he remained with the program where he would become one of their key players over the next two seasons.
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