Senior
Addison Newkirk paced Greensboro Day with 13 points while Maine commit
Ace Flagg, the twin brother of Duke freshman star
Cooper Flagg, added 11.
Ace has won at every stop he has made in high school. As freshmen, Cooper and Ace led
Nokomis (Newport, Maine) to its first state championship.
The duo transferred to
Montverde Academy (Montverde, Fla.) prior to the 2022-23 season and a year later helped the Eagles go 34-0 and finish ranked No. 1 nationally.
Ace Flagg rises for a jumper during a game in December. He closed out his high school career with a state championship in North Carolina to go along with a title he won in Maine as a freshman along with twin brother Cooper. (PHOTO: Tom Masters)
Cooper, the No. 1 player in his class, graduated high school a year early to enroll at Duke. Ace transferred to Greensboro Day, about 50 miles away from Duke to play his senior season.
Johnson has been the head coach at Greensboro Day since 1977 and won his 1,200th career game Dec. 6 when Ace scored 15 points. He joined Gary McKnight of
Mater Dei (Santa Ana, Calif.) and Richard Duease of
Madison-Ridgeland Academy (Madison, Miss.) as the only active coaches to reach that milestone.
This is the 19th time that Johnson has won at least 30 games in a season. He has coached over 85 players who went on to play at the college level.
The Class of 2016 inductee to the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame also won two state championships as the girls tennis head coach in 1998 and 1999.
Ace, who averaged 7.5 points and 5.8 rebounds per game this season at Greensboro Day, is rated as a three-star prospect by 247Sports and will play college basketball at Maine. His mother Kelly was a starter at Maine and played with Stacey Clingan, the late mother of Portland Trail Blazers rookie and three-time MaxPreps Connecticut Player of the Year
Donovan Clingan.
