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Calling All-Time Great Maryland Basketball Players

With basketball practice starting this week for Maryland public high schools, with a number of private and Catholic schools having already begun formal practice in the last two weeks and with the NCAA November early recruiting signing period for colleges almost upon us, we thought we might start getting MDVarsity.com hoop fans in a roundball frame of mind by asking for their feedback/opinions on who are the five greatest prep basketball players in Maryland history.
I have provided a partial, but by no means complete, list of players that should get consideration for this list. All of the players that I have enumerated below are players that I personally had the benefit of seeing at least once as a high school player – even if only in the Capitol Classic or another all-star game.
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For the purposes of this exercise, we are asking only for players who played at Maryland High Schools, therefore, some terrific Maryland residents who played at D.C. schools, for instance, would not be eligible – e.g., I couldn’t include two “personal favorites”: Johnny Dawkins (1982), who lived in Montgomery County, near Aspen Hill, but played ball at D.C.’s now-closed Mackin High School; or Stave Castellan (1975), a Cheverly resident who played at D.C.’s St. Anselm’s. Dawkins, now as assistant coach at Duke scored over 2,000 career points for the Blue Devils and had a successful NBA career. Castellan was a brilliant student-athlete who AVERAGED over 41 ppg as a senior at St. Anselm’s and went on to a very successful ACC career at Virginia and played professionally abroad in Europe. Recent great Maryland residents like Dermarr Johnson, James White, Kevin Lyde and Isaiah Swann are also excluded because they concluded their prep careers out of state.
D.C. basketball was solidly on the National Map by the 1950’s with great players like Elgin Baylor, Dave Bing, George Leftwich, John Thompson, Tom Hoover, etc. DeMatha certainly put Maryland on the Map in the mid-1960’s when they upset Lew Alcindor and New York City’s Power Memorial HS at Cole Field House.
Since I started attending high school games in 1969, the first player who I saw that I would have to include on my nomination list would be DeMatha’s James Brown who, of course, was later an all-Ivy player at Harvard, an NBA pick by Atlanta and a hugely successful broadcaster for Fox.
In many regards, 1969 was the year that high school/college basketball was changed forever in the D.C. area when the University of Maryland hired Lefty Driesell away from Davidson. The penultimate salesman/recruiter, Lefty promptly ran an advertisement in one of the D.C. papers that pictured the Area’s four best prep players, including James Brown, under a headline: “The UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND WANTS YOU!”. Lefty didn’t get Brown and Maryland got a mild rebuke from the NCAA – but Maryland DID get one of the other three players, a talented 6’8” redheaded guard from Northern Virginia named Jim O’Brien. Three years later, in 1972, Georgetown hired John Thompson away from St. Anthony’s High School in D.C. College basketball and college recruiting became big stories in this area and greater attention was focused on D.C. area teams and players.
I have tried to list as many of the best Maryland players as I can recall in chronological order. I have no doubt left out many players who others might wish to nominate and, again, I only went back as far as 1969.
James Brown (DeMatha, 1969); Ed Peterson (Springbrook, 1970); Adrian Dantley (DeMatha , 1973); Kenny Carr (DeMatha, 1974); Skip Wise (Dunbar of Baltimore, 1974); Mike Rice (Thomas Johnson, 1976); Tracy Jackson (Paint Branch, 1977); Ernest Graham (Dunbar of Baltimore 1977); Garcia Hopkins (DuVal, 1977); Tony Guy (Loyola, 1978); Thurl Bailey (Bladensburg, 1979); Quentin Dailey (Cardinal Gibbons, 1979); Len Bias (Northwestern,1982); Reggie Williams & Tyrone Bogues (Dunbar of Baltimore, 1983); Duane Ferrell (Calvert Hall, 1984); Danny Ferry (DeMatha, 1985); Rodney Monroe (St. Maria Goretti, 1987); Walt Willams (Crossland 1988); Jarrod Mustaf (DeMatha, 1988); Michael Tate- Venson (Oxon Hill, 1989); Donte Bright (Dunbar of Baltimore, 1992); Keith Booth (Dunbar of Baltimore, 1993); Louis Bullock (Laurel Baptist, 1995); Nate James (St. John’s Prospect Hall, 1996); Terrance Morris (Thomas Johnson, 1997); Juan Dixon (Calvert Hall, 1997); Mark Karcher (St. Frances, 1997); Albert Mouring (Colonel Richardson, 1997); Jason Capel (St. John’s Prospect Hall, 1998); Joe Forte & Keith Bogans (DeMatha, 1999); Roger Mason (Good Counsel, 1999); Linas Kleiza (Montrose Christian, 2003); Rudy Gay (Archbishop Spalding, 2004)
Please feel free to send your Top 5 or Top10 to the MDVarsity.com Message Board. This is, obviously a very subjective exercise. I would be remiss, for example, if I didn’t mention that I resisted the temptation to list some players who are eligible under the criteria that we have set, but who I left of my nomination list for fear of showing TOO MUCH of a mid-1970’s Montgomery County bias: Craig Davis a 5’9’ (maybe) guard who graduated from now-closed Peary HS in Rockville in 1974 and who was a tremendous shooter/scorer/competitor. Craig was the MVP for the Local Team in the very first Capital Classic. He received a scholarship from NC State in 1974, the year they won the National Title with Thompson, Burleson, Towe, Stoddard, etc. He was a great player; and Brian Magid, the famous “Blond Bomber” who led Blair to the Maryland 1975 State Title over DuVal at Cole Field House and who went on to play for the Terps and the GWU Colonials. Many people still recall Magid as the best “pure” prep shooter they ever saw – too bad they didn’t have the three pointer back then,
Don’t be afraid to let your own bias show, we’d like to see your nominatons!
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