By Richard Carrier, Contributing Writer
richwrites@netzero.net

By covering the Blessed Sacrament game against Tidewater Academy last Thursday, I’ve pretty much seen the competition our county high schools have faced this season and, going in, I’d pretty much made up my mind about who the outstanding players and teams are.

Steward School has a junior transfer from the Washington DC area named Adjehi Baru who reportedly has all of the ACC recruiters and many other D-1 programs salivating. The kid is 6’8” and extremely athletic. He can handle the ball, run the floor, shoot from 20 feet plus and, of course, has a nice post-up game and is a dynamic rebounder. And the Spartans have some very skilled players who compliment him. I have no problem rating him as the most impressive player I’ve seen all year and the best equipped to play and succeed at the next level.

Fuqua School, out of Farmville, has their own 6’8”skill player, LaVon Harper. Harper was around last year, so I’ve seen him several times and, prior to my first Baru sighting, I thought he had the most potential of the big men I’d seen. He was allegedly on Virginia Tech’s watch list even as a sophomore. But the key word here is potential. Last year I thought he was kind of casual in his approach to the game, but I chalked it up to a skilled big man playing with, and against, much smaller and less skilled players. He does not appear to have changed much this season, and he also has a tendency to get into foul trouble with reckless drives to the basket. He too, has a nice outside shot and runs the floor very effectively, and probably is a legitimate D-1 prospect. Over the past five years, I haven’t seen anyone who compares with either one in the Southside District, and Baru is awesome. Harper, however, does not have as skilled a supporting cast and the Falcons were easily handled by Steward 60-31 earlier this season.

It’s no secret that my favorite small man is Powhatan’s Shawn Minor, and his situation is mirrored by Harper’s at Fuqua. I’ve drawn some criticism for others’ interpretation of my thought that a team, at any level, cannot be successful when it depends on one player to provide most of the offense. If those folks would get over thinking I was criticizing the lack of effort by others- which I wasn’t- but more, a lack of production despite that effort, there should be no argument. Not to beat a dead horse, but it has just never happened that a single player has been able to be a consistent winner without substantial production from teammates. And even as good as he is, Shawn Minor is not a legitimate upper echelon D-1 prospect. But back to the significance of the Tidewater Academy-BSH game.

I had not seen the Warriors play this year, but I knew they would arrive in Powhatan sporting a gaudy 23-1 record, which had earned them the Commonwealth’s number one ranking in Virginia Independent Schools’ Division three. Steward and Fuqua are teams in that division, but Tidewater showed up with no one who even remotely resembled a Baru, Harper or Minor on their roster. The first thought that struck me: they were all about the same size, plus or minus just a bit on either side of six feet. Six foot point guard, six foot center, six foot wingmen. The only exception, and that wasn’t by less than a inch or two, was Tommy Starkee, who I soon discovered was a Minor clone and could jump out of the gym. Center Will Doyle shaded just a bit toward looking like an offensive tackle, but he showed the footwork and speed of a half back. And speed, team speed from front to back, soon became evident. Understand, the BSH kids are no turtles; I never thought I’d see anyone beat Trevor Gilliam down the court, but the Warriors snatched rebounds and converted the majority of them into points on run-outs that were often uncontested at the rim.

It is a team of effective mid-range jump shooters; they took only five three pointers all game and made three (The Knights lived, and ultimately died, by the long ball) and everyone handles the ball effectively, if not spectacularly. They are smooth. For Southside District folks, this Tidewater team closely resembles the teams that Bryant Stith puts together down south: a herd of skilled gazelles. The Warriors do have a leader, a go-to guy, in Casey Rickmond, who you can’t tell apart from three other guys on the floor except for the jersey number. How good are the Warriors? After dismantling Fuqua they beat Adjehi Baru and a very talented supporting cast on the Spartans’ home court.