How good would Cooper Flagg's prep team have been if it stayed together in college? 'Modern-day Fab Five'
They joked about it on and off throughout their march to an undefeated season.
'What if we all played together in college?' Montverde Academy's six prized seniors would say to each other last year as they mowed through fellow prep school powerhouses on their way to being crowned the nation's best high school basketball team.
It wasn't even just the Montverde 6 who daydreamed about that tantalizing yet impractical possibility. Players recall Montverde coach Kevin Boyle bringing up the idea in jest 13 months ago when the team traveled to Maine for a pair of games.
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'Imagine if you guys all went to the University of Maine together,' Boyle told them. 'You could take Maine to the NCAA tournament.'
If only those Montverde seniors weren't so deep into the recruiting process already. If only that talk had been more than just idle chatter. Because the core of that Montverde team banding together in college and trying to make a Final Four would have been absolutely riveting.
The seniors on last year's Montverde team have been some of this college basketball season's most productive freshmen. All six are starting as freshmen for high-major teams. Five average at least 12 points per game. Four are projected first-round picks in the 2025 NBA Draft. One is a near-lock to go No. 1 overall.
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Of course, the headliner is Cooper Flagg, the breathlessly hyped Duke freshman who if anything has exceeded expectations this season. The national player of the year favorite averages 19.7 points and is the leader in every major statistical category for a Duke team on track to earn a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament.
Montverde High School went undefeated last season with a rotating cast of star players. (Bruno Rouby/Yahoo Sports)
Skilled, versatile center Derik Queen averages 16.1 points and 8.8 rebounds as the interior focal point of 20th-ranked Maryland's efficient attack. Productive power forward Asa Newell has racked up six double-doubles to keep Georgia in contention for an NCAA bid. Sweet-shooting wing Liam McNeeley leads UConn in scoring at 15.4 points per game and has increased that average to 21.8 since returning from an ankle injury.
Guards Robert Wright III of Baylor and Curtis Givens of LSU aren't potential 2025 lottery picks like their former high school teammates, but they too have hope of playing in the NBA someday. Wright recently torched Kansas for 24 points and 6 assists. Givens has flashed playmaking and defensive talent as a part-time starter.
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How competitive could the Montverde 6 be if they had united once more at the college level rather than scattering to different power-conference programs?
'I feel like we would have been top 25,' Queen told Yahoo Sports.
'I definitely think we could make it to at least the Sweet 16,' Wright echoed.
Those predictions are too conservative, Arizona Compass Prep coach Pete Kaffey told Yahoo Sports. Kaffey, whose team lost twice to Montverde last season, argued that last year's Montverde players could have formed 'one of the top teams in college basketball' had they stayed together one more season.
'They would have been the modern-day Fab Five,' Kaffey said.
How Montverde 6 ended up at prolific NBA pipeline
There was a mantra that Cooper Flagg's parents adopted years ago even before they realized that they were raising a basketball phenom.
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'We would always say that if Cooper's the best player in a gym, we've gotta go find another gym for him to get into,' mom Kelly Flagg told Yahoo Sports earlier this season.
At first, that meant challenging Cooper to play against kids two and three years older than him. Then the Flaggs helped form a club program that traveled to out-of-state tournaments in search of more competition and exposure than their native Maine could provide. By the time Cooper coasted to a state title as a freshman at Nokomis High, the Flaggs realized that he and twin brother Ace needed to leave Maine altogether to maximize their potential.
The search for a more challenging environment led the Flaggs to send their sons to Montverde. The Orlando-area K-through-12 boarding school had become a magnet for top-tier basketball talent from all over the world by pouring millions of dollars into its athletic facilities, hiring renowned coaches and aligning with Nike. Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons and Cade Cunningham all passed through Montverde on their way to NBA riches. The school put 16 alums on NBA opening day rosters this season, more than the likes of UCLA, Kansas, Indiana and North Carolina.
The story of how the rest of last year's seniors landed at Montverde isn't all that different from how the basketball powerhouse attracted Flagg.
Queen was the first to join Montverde after leading St. Frances Academy in Baltimore to an undefeated regular season as a ninth grader. A Montverde assistant coach scouted Queen and eagerly extended an invitation to the MaxPreps national freshman of the year before the 2021-22 school year. McNeeley, Newell, Givens and Flagg all joined Montverde the following year. Like Flagg, the other three came in search of elite coaching and stronger competition.
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'Everybody knows Montverde — it's a pipeline,' said Newell, a native of Athens, Georgia, to Yahoo Sports. 'I wouldn't say it was an easy decision leaving my hometown and moving down to the Orlando area, but I knew if I'm playing for someone like Coach Boyle and playing against the best players in practice, it would definitely mold me into a better player.'
The experience of leaving friends and family behind and moving to an unfamiliar city made the Montverde players more tight-knit than the average high school team. So did enduring Boyle's famously intense practices and conditioning sessions together. As Newell points out, 'When you first get there, you don't know anyone else. Your only true friends are really the basketball team.'
Endless hours in the gym helped Montverde earn the No. 1 seed at Geico Nationals in 2023, but a stunning quarterfinal loss against eighth-seeded Sunrise Christian shattered the Eagles' hopes of capturing a championship. They blew a six-point lead in the final minute of a painful 46-45 loss.
A four-point play from Matas Buzelis and a right-wing transition 3-pointer from Scotty Middleton propelled Sunrise Christian into the lead. Montverde had one final chance but Queen's heavily contested driving layup caromed hard off the backboard and didn't fall, nor did Flagg's rushed but wide-open put-back attempt at the buzzer.
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The memory of that upset loss fueled Montverde the following season.
'We couldn't lose back-to-back years,' Queen said. 'We had to come back and learn from our mistakes.'
Capping off an undefeated run with a title
To Arizona Compass Prep coach Pete Kaffey, superior talent alone didn't make Montverde unbeatable last season. Kaffey also points to the fact that so many key players were in their second or third season in Boyle's system.
'Whenever you get super-talented guys for more than a year in our world, the prep world, that makes a huge difference,' Kaffey said.
The Montverde coaches only recruited one key player to join last season's returning quintet of Flagg, Queen, McNeeley, Newell and Givens. They persuaded Wright to come try to win at the highest level of high school basketball after the Philadelphia product earned Pennsylvania state player of the year honors as a junior.
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The addition of Wright gave Montverde a second playmaking guard who could attack the rim and produce open looks for himself or others. Wright essentially became the team's sixth starter, meaning that on any given night a different member of the Montverde 6 — yes, even Flagg — would come off the bench.
'Everybody sacrificed,' Newell said. 'We all knew that going in, but we all wanted to be part of something great.'
The team that Boyle put on the floor last season might only be rivaled in prep basketball history by Montverde's famed 2019-20 team. That team featured future No. 1 overall draft pick Cade Cunningham and fellow future NBA players Scottie Barnes, Moses Moody, Day'Ron Sharpe and Dariq Whitehead. Montverde was a dominant 25-0 that year before the COVID-19 pandemic halted the season early.
By comparison, last year's Montverde team won all 33 games it played by an average of nearly 30 points apiece. Only 10 of Montverde's victories were by fewer than 20 points. Only three were by single digits.
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In the title game at nationals, Montverde's hero was the least heralded member of its six-man rotation. Givens hit six 3-pointers and erupted for a game-high 24 points off the bench to help the Eagles complete an undefeated season and capture the championship that had eluded them the previous year.
'That was a really good day,' Queen said. 'It was like, 'bout time. We worked hard for it. We talked about it every day nonstop. When the time came, we all did what we had to do.'
That may be the last time that the Montverde 6 played for the same team, but the bonds they built remain strong. As college freshmen, they watch as many of each other's games as they can and check box scores whenever they miss one. They text or Facetime regularly and comment on each other's social media pages.
'We were the only people we had down there at Montverde, so we did everything together,' Wright said. 'It definitely brought us closer together. It made us all brothers.'
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We'll never know what that group could have accomplished playing together for one season in college, but now Queen has a different goal. Next month, he wants to gain NCAA tournament bragging rights over as many of his former high school teammates as possible.
Said Queen with a laugh, 'I want to play all of them.'
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