His mother, Fremont High alum Amber (née Russell), played a season of basketball at Weber State. Family and friends live in Weber and Davis counties. As a teenager, he’d spent time in gyms putting up shots with WSU head coach Eric Duft while his sister and Duft’s daughter practiced on the same team.

“I’d be over on the side shooting and Coach Duft would talk to me, rebound for me — or chase down balls, I was probably bricking them everywhere,” Whiting quipped.

And in the smallest of worlds, he already knows and has played against WSU shooting guard Viljami Vartiainen — in Finland.

While looking at relationships as a strong selling point, several things pointed Whiting to Weber State this time around. The 6-foot-3 UNLV and former Boise State guard announced his commitment to transfer to WSU and brings the Wildcats another dose of age and leadership for the 2025-26 season.

Emil Lippe, Associated Press

After playing prep ball in Burley, Idaho, Whiting went to Finland to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As soon as his call came, his father, Trent, made a call of his own. Most known for his 2000-01 senior season at BYU in which he scored 14.2 points per game, Trent spent the season prior at Utah and was teammates with Hanno Mottola.

So Trent called Mottola, who coached for 12 years at Helsinki Basketball Academy and also with the Finnish national team, and helped Jace line up opportunities to scrimmage against professional and academy teams in various cities while in Finland. Near the end of his time in the country, Jace found himself in the same town as HBA and played against Vartiainen multiple times.

Fast forward to this month, and Jace Whiting reunited with Vartiainen when he arrived in Ogden for his official visit.

“(Vartiainen) was one of the first ones to reach out to me as soon as Weber State started recruiting me. Honestly, it’s pretty funny; that’s a one-in-a-million chance,” Jace said. “He came up to me and said, ‘Hey bro, what’s up?’ I said the same thing back to him in Finnish, and his eyes got really wide.”

* * *

Basketball is life in the Whiting family.

José Luis Villegas, Associated Press

“We don’t know how to turn it off,” Amber said.

Trent played professionally in Italy in a career that spanned 12 years. He and Amber met at Snow College (Amber was an honorable mention JUCO All-American there) and eventually both played at BYU. Amber just finished a three-year stint as BYU women’s basketball head coach. Jace’s sister, Amari, is heading to Oklahoma State after two seasons at BYU.

Jace wouldn’t have it any other way.

“We’re super competitive in my family,” Jace said. “People ask if basketball gets brought home … but I honestly love it. We talk basketball all day, there’s games going on the TV, we’re sending each other highlights and stuff.

“It’s been a huge blessing having two parents that played college basketball, one played professionally overseas. They’re great examples to us and the mentorship aspect has been priceless. Anything we go through, you can count on that they’ve been through it so they always have advice for us, helping us work through stuff. That’s been a big blessing. Also having two parents who have coached at some level, that’s been pretty fun. I feel like that heightened my IQ for the game.”

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Speaking on a different phone call, Amber echoed Jace’s analysis.

“Jace has a very high IQ for basketball and that comes from just living it his whole life. He would go to practices with his dad and just eat it up,” she said. “The fact that he has so many coaches and teammates from both schools reaching out, talking to him nonstop, you just know what kind of teammate he was. He’s very coachable.

“Jace is a fighter. He’s always been that underdog-type kid who’s going to fight for his spot. He’ll play with emotion. … That’s why I think he’ll fit at Weber State. He’s one of those grinders, he lives in the gym. I’m excited to see him with this coaching staff because they seem like those type of guys. They’re going to make him better.”

That emotion and IQ are the Italian parts of Jace Whiting as a basketball player, he says.

“Basketball in Italy was like the purest form I’ve seen. Their teams are like their religion, kind of like how they do soccer as well, where they’re lighting fires in the stands, they’ve got all the chants going, people are shirtless, just extremely passionate,” Jace said. “So growing up in that culture, that rubbed off on me a little bit, including how I play the game. … Europeans do a really god job of developing players fundamentally. I remember working on ball-handling, form shooting every day, and different kinds of actions and reads even at a young age. … That definitely went a long ways for me.”

Amber said bonding through basketball has been great for her family. She remembers calling Jace from hotel rooms to break down film together on Synergy and that sometimes she and Trent can provide pick-me-ups to Jace and Amari when they can tell their mental side needs attention.

As a senior at Burley High School, Jace averaged 24.4 points, 6.3 rebounds and 5.2 assists per game and was an all-state first-team selection. He gruelingly worked his way into quick shape the summer he returned from Finland and played 16 minutes per game in all 33 outings that season — ultimately playing in 66 games at Boise State, averaging 3.3 points and 1.7 rebounds per game while shooting 50% from the 3-point line as a sophomore.

He was in the top-seven rotation his freshman year, saw his role start to diminish, and he said he and Boise’s head coach mutually agreed for him to seek another opportunity.

That took him to Las Vegas. But he broke a bone in his foot in his second game at UNLV. Kevin Kruger was then fired after his fourth season as head coach, so Jace entered his name into the transfer portal again.

The new staff in Vegas, under head coach Josh Pastner, made a push to keep Whiting. He also visited Utah Tech and, while he had dozens of other schools interested, he considered those two schools and Weber State his top three, wanting to make his process a quick one.

But both Jace and Amber both started seeing purple with how WSU’s staff broke down his film during his official visit.

Jace says toughness on both ends of the floor are a large part of what defines his game. He wants to guard one through three and is excited over what Weber coaches outlined for him when it comes to operating in the pick and roll. He’s champing at the bit to unleash his potential after playing a role in Boise and not getting going at UNLV.

“It was less of them trying to put me in a box or make me a puzzle piece, they just broke down my game and showed me they know what I’m about. The whole time they just said they don’t want to change me as a player, they just want to … maximize my abilities and strengths,” Jace said. “It spoke volumes that they took the time to break that down and they nailed it on the head as far as how I already felt about my game, and how I am as a person and a player.”

Jace’s career has provided homecomings for both sides of the family. Trent has lots of family around the Boise area; Jace said it was great having places to go for Sunday dinner and have family in the stands at home games. Now, that shifts to Utah.

Between Italy and Idaho, the Whitings lived in Syracuse for about four years, including Jace’s freshman year of high school, until a job promotion for Trent took them to Burley. Amber’s family largely remains around Weber County. She said she had opportunities to be head or assistant coach at various colleges this year but decided to gather herself and spend time watching her kids play instead.

“I don’t tell (extended family) what’s going on when my kids are going through the recruiting process … but right before he announced (for Weber State), he made sure he told our families first, he put it in our group chats and they were so excited,” Amber said. “So many were saying, ‘Come live with us!’

“It’s cool to go back to where I’m from because my family hasn’t got to see him play a ton. He has cousins who look up to him; he’s the oldest grandkid on my side so it’s pretty cool that way to be able to have the little ones look up to him.”

Jace Whiting is one of four incoming transfers, all set to be juniors, as Weber State has finalized its roster. He and Seattle big man Malek Gomma are Division I incomers, point guard Tijan Saine is from Division II and wing/forward Edwin Suarez comes from Arizona Western in the junior college ranks.

Whiting will likely play at shooting guard and point guard. One gets the sense he plans on making a splash.

“Sitting out for a year isn’t the funnest thing, especially when you love basketball. So I’ve been antsy for a while now,” Jace said. “You can definitely say I’m ready to get out there.”