Meet Jefferson hoops freshman Chris Cervino, a rising social media influencer

Chris Cervino wasn’t trying to become a TikTok influencer. He just wanted to make a “funny, trolling” video to get in his opponents’ head before a game last year. That was until he went viral.

“I made this video, it was called, ‘Road to D2,’” said the Jefferson freshman guard. “There’s this kid, his name [online] is ‘Road to D1,’ and we were going to play against his team. .. I made the video, it blew up. And then in that game, I actually ended up having a really good game. There were a bunch of videos posted about me [afterward]. One actually got like 2 million views and like 700,000 likes.

“It was a lot happening all at once, but it was a really cool experience. That’s kind of how it took off just from that moment right there.”

“Road to D1” is Troy Hornbeck, a 2026 recruit who has documented his journey to play Division I basketball and gained a large following doing so. He has more than 466,900 followers on his TikTok and is attending IMG Academy.

The two played against each other in the Overtime Elite league last year, where Cervino’s YNG Dreamerz beat Hornbeck’s Diamond Doves en route to an OTE championship. The Atlanta-based league acts similar to a professional league, offering high-level training for athletes ages 16 to 20 years old. It also claims to boost athletes’ brand and social media presence.

So Cervino took advantage of the traction he gained on social media and continued to post videos — from dancing to highlighting moments in his basketball career — while playing at Jefferson. He’s the only player on the men’s basketball team with an NIL deal and has gained 9,090 followers on TikTok.

“On social media, I like to just display myself,” he said. “I don’t really care about what other people think of me, even in basketball games. I wear gray socks. I don’t care what people think of me. People have looked down on me my whole life. ... I’m happy with myself and who I am as a person.”

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But the most interesting aspect of Cervino’s journey is how he got there.

The Franklin Lakes, N.J., native grew up playing basketball with San Antonio Spurs rookie Dylan Harper, who was drafted second overall last year. The two became close friends while playing AAU for Brick City, a team coached by Harper’s mom, prior to high school.

“In my backyard, we would go at it one-on-one almost every day, because we lived so close to each other,” Cervino said. “We would just play one-on-one in the backyard, talk smack to each other. I would run away with a bloody nose, it was a lot of fun. We would always challenge each other when we were young, and seeing him grow up to play where he is now, it’s crazy.”

While Harper played for Don Bosco Prep, Cervino won back-to-back state championships at Ramapo.

As a junior, he was part of the team’s first state title in program history. During his senior year, Cervino eclipsed 1,000 career points, after he scored 34 in the state final. Playing in college was always the dream, he said. It didn’t matter the level.

Coming out of high school, he had interest from one school, Felician University, which competes with Jefferson in the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference.

However, he didn’t know if he was ready yet. Instead, he decided to opt for a prep year.

“If I got an extra year, I would be much more developed,” Cervino said. “So I took the extra year. I went to a really good school, played in the Overtime Elite League, played against five stars every single day, got my body better, developed myself as a player, and then that eventually led me to come here.”

He attended Moravian Prep in North Carolina, which is considered one of the top high school basketball programs in the nation. The school is also an affiliate with Overtime Elite, meaning they play two schedules during the year: a national high school schedule and an OTE schedule, where the team is called YNG Dreamerz.

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“Moving to North Carolina, it was a crazy jump,” he said. “But I learned a lot about life there, and how basketball could open up opportunities for me. For example, with social media, basketball opened that up for me, so I learned a lot from there.”

Through Overtime, Cervino was exposed to a social media agency called Press Upload, which gave him pointers on how to monetize his name. He eventually signed with an agency that finds brand deals on his behalf — like VKTRY insoles, which he partnered with and noted “it was really cool” since he grew up wearing those in his shoes.

Cervino, a 6-foot shooting guard, is still learning the ropes in his first year at Jefferson. He’s played in three games this season and tries to be a sponge in practice under coach Jimmy Riley, who spent 15 seasons on Hall of Famer Herb Magee’s staff.

When it comes to his social media platform, Cervino is not chasing a number of followers or views, it’s about having fun with it while “living in the moment and seeing what happens next.” He also hopes other athletes at the Division II level see that they can have a platform, too.

“There’s always going to be people overlooking you,” Cervino said. “You only can control what you can control, which is how much work you put in, the effort you put into it, and all that stuff. Focus on yourself, focus on what you need to do.”