Today I get out of context a bit -just a little, that in the end everything is related, as you already know- and I put aside the university competition as such to descend a little more to grassroots basketball. From the High School schools the talent of the players is appreciated and worked, and in fact many NBA stars and legends have left their classrooms directly to a franchise. It is not uncommon for the United States to have such an interest in training young promises at such a high level.
Today I bring you in today’s Newsletter to one of the most important private schools in the country, which has trained not a few NBA stars: Montverde Academy.
Montverde Academy, NBA talent factory
I know it is not easy to follow the college basketball season, but I leave you as a consolation that it is much more difficult to follow the day to day of High School basketball. We are no longer talking about high school basketball at the national level, we are already talking about regional championships, state championships plus countless tournaments spread throughout the United States. I admit that once I tried to establish a minimum of knowledge about it, but between the lack of existing information and the complexity of the competition I ended up leaving it pending (once again). The schools and institutes where very high-level basketball players have been trained are multiple and historical, and many of these schools have adapted their curriculum to train these students of future sports elite, earning a more than deserved fame.
Today I come to talk about one of them in particular, Montverde Academy, a private entity of great academic and -especially- sports recognition located about 40 kilometers from Orlando, Florida, and which has exported innumerable talent to large sports programs of the NCAA. A center of more than 150 hectares, almost 1,500 students in the total of its courses -almost a third are international students- and facilities and residences of all kinds to accommodate them during the school year.
At the basketball level, he has been directed on the benches for ten years by Kevin Boyle, already a myth of high school basketball, that came from another great high school basketball program like St. Patrick, in New Jersey, where he trained players of the caliber of Kyrie Irving, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Corey Fisher, Samuel Dalembert or Al Harrington. With his arrival in Montverde, Boyle continued to recruit players with great professional potential, passing through his hands talents such as those of Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, D’Angelo Russell, R.J. Barrett, Precious Achiuwa or more recently Scottie Barnes Y Cade Cunningham. He can boast of being the only coach to train two # 1 in the draft (Simmons and Irving), two # 2 (Kidd-Gilchrist and Russell) and two # 3 (Embiid and Barrett), although this sack will probably expand in this next draft with Cade Cunningham, who will also be a top 3 for sure.
His good work as a coach and recruiter actually led him to get his sixth national championship this same season, beating Sunrise Christian Academy led by two other future stars such as Caleb Houstan and Langston Love, closing one of the best generations of high school players in history.
El ‘Dream Team’ de High School
The 2019-2020 season left a generation of dream players in Montverde. In fact, many analysts have confirmed that it has been the best generation that has ever passed in a High School championship. The Eagles won it all that season, a beastly 25-0 at the hands of players who have delighted college fans this past year, such as Cade Cunningham (Oklahoma State), Scottie Barnes (Florida State) o Moses Moody (Arkansas), keys to the team’s success. Also participating this past year in the NCAA names such as Day’Ron Sharpe (North Carolina), Zeb Jackson (Michigan) o Keegan Harvey (Charleston) although their freshmen seasons were more discreet.
But also, we are talking about a team loaded with NBA talent not only for next season. Up to eight players from that 2020 champion team were ranked among the top 65 players in their respective litters: Cunningham (# 1, 2020), Barnes (# 8, 2020), Sharpe (# 14, 2020), Moody (# 38, 2020) and Jackson (# 65, 2020) plus Langston Love (#25, 2021), Caleb Houstan (# 4, 2022) and Dariq Whitehead (# 8, 2022). And all this in a team that came from losing the year before Precious Achiuwa (Memphis, Miami Heat), Omar Payne (Florida) or Balsa Koprivica (Florida State), players who have been very important at the university level. A savage.
Cunningham and Barnes’ game dominance was unreal, two players with the ability to be dominating at the college level doing and undoing as they pleased at the high school level. Cunningham could play up to three different positions and Barnes spanning all five, he could play where he pleased. Added to them was Moody’s superb wrist and defensive sacrifice capacity, not as mediatic as his teammates but whose contribution was always decisive in attack and back, and a versatile and strong center like Sharpe to play with a pure interior reference, but also with that dose of versatility that characterized the team. But also future generations with Love, Whitehead and Houstan at the helm pressed to have important minutes despite the great talent they had in front of them, three scoring players and good physique still to be formed. And without forgetting Zeb Jackson, who gave golden minutes from the bench.
This 2020 Montverde Academy was huge. As I mentioned before, many analysts have analyzed in the last two years if this generation of players is the most talented that has joined in the same high school team, but in the last decades there have been many high school teams that have been able to do it. shadow. We talk about the Oak Hill of Jerry Stackhouse, Jeff McGinnis or Mark Blount; the Southwestern Detroit de Jalen Rose, Voshon Leonard y Howard Eisley; la Dunbar Baltimore de Muggsy Bogues, Reggie Lewis, Reggie Williams or David Wingate … More recently the three brothers also agreed Ball Y Onyeka Okongwu in Chino Hills; Greg Oden and Mike Conley in Lawrence North and also D’Angelo Russell and Ben Simmons were partners years ago at this very Montverde Academy.
As if to laugh at the ‘Big Three’ that in recent years have been created in the NBA.
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