A career-altering injury. Unranked. No stars. Only one Division I offer before his senior season. And the story takes a 17-year-old to a premier College Basketball program that's the last to win back-to-back National Championships.

Unthinkable and unimaginable, right? Pretty much.

Back on February 23, 2019, Elijah Kennedy thought his basketball career might be ending before it even took flight. That night, going in for a lay-up against Nansemond River in the Region 5A Tournament semifinals, he slipped on the floor at the Norfolk Scope. The gruesome knee injury - diagnosed as tibial tuberosity - required him being carted off on a stretcher, taken to the hospital and surgery was performed to effectively end his sophomore season.

His Green Run High School squad would go on to make history that evening, thanks to a half-court buzzer-beater from the late Ashley James, to secure their first State Tournament trip in 35 years. Yet, without their key sixth man in Kennedy, the Stallions would go on to lose their next two games to Maury and Varina, respectively.

Flash forward 891 days later and the 6-foot-4 smooth shooting guard out of Virginia Beach is signing a National Letter of Intent to play his College Basketball for Head Coach Mike White and the Florida Gators out of the Southeastern Conference.

Kennedy, who was named the Virginia High School Coaches Association Class 5 State Player of the Year as a senior, committed within a week after visiting Gainesville in late July.

"The visit went great. From the moment my family and I got there to the moment we left, Coach White along with the rest of the staff showed me nothing, but hospitality and love. They made an unfamiliar place feel like home," Kennedy told VirginiaPreps.com.

"It's definitely a dream come true. A couple years ago, I never even imagined going to a high major D-1 university like Florida."