High School Reunion at the Final Four


NEW ORLEANS — Villanova veteran Brandon Slater is in the Final Four with one goal: to win a national championship.

And if achieving that goal means beating some of your old high school teammates, so be it.

Slater at the Final Four in St. Petersburg in Chantilly, Va. Paul VI Catholic High School, one of four players who became his high school teammates. While Slater was a senior in the 2017-18 season, Paul VI also selected North Carolina guard Anthony Harris. and the Duke is protecting Jeremy Roach and Trevor Keels. Together they won a state championship.

Slater said the group has been keeping in touch via text message throughout the season to support each other, but with a trip to that national championship game, things might not be so easy this week.

“We keep each other positive all year, and if we play each other all year, we’re not that close friends,” said Slater, a 1-meter 7, who averaged 8.3 points and 3.6 rebounds per game. For Villanova, he said in a phone call this week.

The Paul VI players – “PVI”, short for school – aren’t the only former teammates to be reunited in the national semi-finals. North Carolina sophomore guard RJ Davis and Duke freshman forward AJ Griffin won a New York state championship together in 2018 at Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains. Duke junior wing Wendell Moore Jr. and North Carolina veteran forward Leaky Black played together at Cox Mill High School in Concord, NC

Slater and Villanova will face Kansas in the first game on Saturday, while Duke and North Carolina will play in the second game. Two teams from the same state and same conference will face each other for the first time in the Final Four.

In Chantilly, Paul VI’s head basketball coach, Glenn Farello, plans to watch the national semifinals on his couch with his 1-year-old daughter, Zadie, while wearing a navy blue Duke T-shirt under a Villanova sweater. With Harris not playing this season as he recovers from an anterior cruciate ligament injury, Farello is free to root for his other former players to meet up for the Duke-Villanova national championship game on Monday.

“If we have a Duke-Villanova final, I support all three of my guys to be great, and we’ll celebrate with one and hug the others,” Farello said in a phone interview.

One of his former players added: “The great thing about all of these guys is their competitiveness. Guys who are all great teammates. It’s great to see your guys continue to play with teams that have and contribute to a winning culture and do whatever it takes to help teams because that’s what they’ve done here with us.”

Throughout the 2017-18 season, Slater has sought to be a role model to his younger teammates – Roach is a sophomore at Duke and Keels is a freshman. Slater had learned the ropes from longtime friend Aaron Thompson, who was a year ahead of him in Paul VI and had just completed a five-year career at Butler, where he was the program’s career assist leader.

“Me and he are very close – we talk almost every day if possible, or every week if possible,” Slater said of Thompson. “He definitely taught me how to lead, and when he left, he knew we still had time to come and some players were coming. We had a young Jeremy Roach, a young Trevor Keels, we had Anthony Harris. And he told me it was our turn now.”

For the 2017-18 season, the Panthers went 18-0 in the tough schedule of the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference, widely recognized as the nation’s top private school prep basketball league. That February, however, Slater fractured a bone in the left hand of his shooting hand, putting him in the WCAC playoffs, losing to Paul VI rival Gonzaga College High.

Farello returned with his hand “fully stuffed,” and said, “He couldn’t shoot beyond 12 feet.” But he played an important defensive role when the Panthers won the state championship by 18 points against Bishop O’Connell.

Slater knew then that Harris, Roach, and Keels were destined for bigger and better things.

“You could tell how talented these guys would be,” Slater said. “Jeremy Roach and Trevor Keels stood out at key moments.”

Villanova Technical Director Jay Wright liked the way Slater filled out the statistics sheet. After Slater recorded multiple rebounds, steals, and blocks in a game Wright watched, he offered Slater a scholarship. When it came to choosing a college, Slater chose Villanova because he liked the university’s approach.

“The way they preached about teamwork and family was very similar,” Slater said. “The biggest thing we have at Villanova is our family.”

After Slater, high major coaches continued to recruit Paul VI’s players. Former North Carolina head coach Roy Williams originally came from school for Harris, who was affiliated with the Tar Heels after choosing Virginia Tech. Coach Buzz Williams changed course after going to Texas A&M.

Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski and his team also visited Paul VI to recruit Roach, who pledged to play for the Blue Devils in May 2019. During one of Krzyzewski’s visits to see Roach, Farello invited Keels into his office so the young actor could meet Salon. Fame trainer. Farello knew Duke was Keels’ dream school.

“She walked in and her eyes widened,” Farello recalled. “As he was going out, I turned to Coach K and said, ‘I just wanted to make sure you knew who he was, because at some point I think you might want to go back with that. And of course, they did.”

Keels finally promised Duke in April 2021 and is now one of three Duke freshmen expected to be selected in the first round of this summer’s NBA draft, along with Griffin and Paolo Banchero.

Built like an NFL linebacker at 6 feet 5 inches and 221 pounds, Keels averaged 11.3 points and 3.5 rebounds while Roach averaged 8.6 points and 3.1 assists.

Roach knew they were part of something special with their high school team, and he felt there was bigger things ahead.

“Four years later, you couldn’t be happier to be here in the Final Four,” Roach said on Friday. “It just shows you how good PVI is.”

Now they want to win another championship on a bigger stage.

Keels said in February that the current Blue Devils have “better talent” and “better depth” than the national championship-winning 2015 team, and this year’s team can “definitely” cut the net. Krzyzewski’s final year in the program.

Meanwhile, Farello said he hears from several NBA scouts who check in every week not just about Keels but also about Slater.

While the Paul VI players are now focused on their own teams, Slater said down the road that he hopes the group will learn to appreciate their success this season.

“When all this is said and done, we will definitely sit back and talk about this forever,” he said.



Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *