Best High School Basketball
 

Anyone have an opinion on this, either boys or girls? I never thought much about it until recently when I moved from Cleveland Ohio to Boise Idaho. What a drastic change. I went from refereeing guys who could dunk, who were thoroughbred athletes, to refereeing a bunch of clutch and grab slow guys who can hardly shoot. I have also refereed in Utah and would place them comfortably ahead of Idaho but still well below Ohio. I have a feeling Ohio is in the upper echelon. Anyone else seen a variety of states and have an opinion on where the different states/regions should be ranked? Anyone think their state is better than Ohio and some actually experience or other evidence to back them up?

as a corollary, the drop in referee associations from Cleveland to Boise was just as drastic. If someone in here is a Boisean, please do not take offense; just the reality of my experience.

I have called HS ball in Florida and Hawaii and the quality of play in the former, especially big-man play, is far superior. There is not much play above the rim here (HI). Guard play here is very good and the intensity of play here is excellent, but the overall quality is not up to FL. My association here is excellent, better than the two I belonged to in FL though they weren't bad.

Since there isn't a national high school championship (that I know of), I think the only way to get an unbiased verdict on this would be to track, from a certain time on, how many players from each state went on to play (start?) in the NCAA and/or NBA. But, then, you're only truly measuring what state is producing successful NCAA and/or NBA players, not necessarily excellent high school basketball players.

Anyone know of any such database?

I would probably say the Washington DC area, to include Northern Virginia, Maryland and the district, has the best basketball. If I began to name some of the players who are from this area I'm sure I would miss someone, but to name a few from the last couple of years:

Ty Lawson - UNC
Marcus ???? - UNC
Scottie Reynolds - Villanova
??? Cunningham - Villanova
Kevin Durant - Texas
Jeff Green - Georgetown
Roy Hibbard - Georgetown

I lived there, but I'm not originally from the area so I don't know all the guys in the past. People like Grant Hill, Danny Ferry, Lawrence Moten, Brian Westbrook, the Forte kid who played at UNC and many others have been coming out of the area for years. The Washington Catholic league is one of the premier leagues in the country and had two teams in the top 20 earlier this year (I don't know if they are still in standings) - DeMatha and St. John's. It was always fun to do a high school game with 8 D1 kids on a small high school court at once. My last high school game in DC was Oak Hill versus Montrose Christian. All 5 starters on Oak Hill were from DC and Montrose had Oak Hill's top scorer from the previous season (Durant).

I have also seen the level of play in Arizona, Nevada and Mississippi.

I wouldn't even conjecture about the rest of the country, but I know we have a very wide variety of ball here in Portland, Oregon. Some excellent teams, both boys and girls, and great play, and some of the usual.

I've heard things about Boise, though, and I can imagine you're really going through culture shock, both in terms of the play, and the reffing.

You really can't count Oak Hill in that mix - they recruit players from all over the country. I lived in the Baltimore area for 3 years . . . the greater DC/B'more area is good, but NY is good, Philly is good, FL is good, TX is good and CA is good too - WV seniors play OH seniors every year and the record is about 50-50 over the past 10-12 years so I certainly wouldn't count OH as a bastian of basketball. Huntington HS here in WV is among the top teams this year but that's a oddity in WV.

I agree with you and this is a hard question to answer. The only reason I mentioned Oak Hill is because of what you pointed out; they recruit from all over the country and during the 05-06 season all 5 starters were from the DC area. Their captain now is from the DC area - Nolan Smith - and will be at Duke next year.

Between DC and Baltimore, there may be 4 players that will make the McDonald's all American team.

I'm sure Oak Hill will finish #1 this year. I'd like to see Huntington play them. They beat DeMatha by 12 last week. OJ Mayo is incredible (could go NBA without the new rules) - with 3 other starters going D1 that's not a bad team either.

Possible Clue ... Top Boy's in 2006. Looks like Chesapeake and Ohio Valley areas win!

1) Greg Oden (7-0, 240, C) - Indianapolis, Indiana (Lawrence North HS)
2) Kevin Durant (6-9, 205, F) - Maryland (Montrose Christian)
3) Brandan Wright (6-9, 200, F) - Tennessee (Brentwood Academy)
4) Chase Budinger (6-7, 190, F) - Carlsbad, California (La Costa Canyon)
5) Wayne Ellington (6-4, 185, G) - Merion Station, Pennsylvania (Episcopal Academy)
6) Demond Carter (5-10, 165, PG) - Reserve Christian School (Reserve, LA)
7) Thaddeus Young (6-8, 205, F) - Memphis, Tennessee (Mitchell Road)
8) Paul Harris (6-4, 215, G) - Niagara Falls, New York (Niagara Falls)
9) Derrick Caracter (6-8, 275, F) - Elizabeth, New Jersey (St. Patrick's)
10) Vernon Macklin (6-10, 190, F) - Portsmouth, Virginia (I.C. Norcom)
11) Tywon Lawson (6-0, 180, G) - Forestville, Maryland (Oak Hill Academy)
12) Spencer Hawes (6-10, 220, C) - Seattle, Washington (Seattle Prep)
13) Jonathan Kreft (7-0, 240, PF) - Stoneman Douglas High School (Parkland, FL)
14) DeShawn Sims (6-7, 225, SF) - Pershing High School (Detroit, MI)
15) Duke Crews (6-7, 225, SF) - Bethel High School (Hampton, VA)

Am I missing something? I don't see Ohio listed on here at all . . .

The Ohio RIVER a.k.a. Ohio VALLEY. Generally covers PA, KY, TENN, Western VA, WV.

I have worked in Texas (DFW Metroplex, Houston, and Austin areas), North Carolina, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. I would take a DFW or Houston group anytime versus anyone. LOTS of athletes, runnin-and-gunnin. Of course, if you want to talk "fundamentals," I haven't seen anything come close to the Panhandle in Texas.

Kevin Durant is from Texas, not Maryland.

The top ten or twenty-five lists are not the best predictors of the level of talent in an area. These are usually freak athletes that have natural ablility and/or size far in excess of the rest of the players.

A better test of the talent levels in a region might be the number of D1 players that hail from the area. By example, in 2005-2006, over 200 D1 players were from New York City. There are probably an equal number from the rest of the Greater NY metropolitan area. I don't know the exact numbers for any other region, so I won't claim that they best basketball is in the NYC region. It's pretty good, though, especially in the NYC CHSAA and PSAL AA divisions.

Texas, Michigan, California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio also produce a lot of D1 players. This is mostly a by-product of population; the more players you have, the more skilled the better players will be.

BTW, there actually is a HS "national championship" tournament sponsored by And1.

Here's an anecdotal story. A few years ago, my oldest daughter was an honorable mention all-state basketball player for a small private (and not very ocompetitive) high school. She was being recruited by some mid-major Div-1 schools (think MAC) and some Div 2 schools. Between her junior and senior year, her team went to UNC to a team camp. Her head coach noticed that there were a TON of teams from Ohio at this team camp so he asked the UNC head coach why there were so many Ohio teams at this camp. SHe indicated that they tried to get ALOT of Ohio teams to the camp, because the style of basketball they play there was closer to the way its played in college than in some other states. More physical and athletic. Her words, not mine.

Yeabut it's summer league team tournament style play. At least the regional contests are.

But they do call themselves "national championship".