Hoops Notes: Hoosier State has a new powerhouse

Marvin Rea’s resume is a testament to what working hard on the basketball court and the classroom can bring.

Rea won the prestigious Trester Award – symbolic of outstanding mental attitude, scholarship, leadership and basketball ability – as a senior at Roosevelt High School in Gary, Ind.

After high school he earned a spot on the roster at Purdue University as a walk-on under head coach Gene Keady. Current and former college head coaches Steve Lavin (UCLA), Kevin Stallings (Vanderbilt) and Bruce Weber (Illinois) were on Keady’s staff at the time.

So when Rea brought his philosophy of hard work, good citizenship and pushing student-athletes toward college to the basketball program at Gary’s Bowman Academy, kids bought in.

“The ultimate goal was to get these guys exposure so that they can move on to the next level, Division I basketball,” Rea said. “How can I put these guys in a position to get exposure?”

Thanks to a tough, regional schedule that includes opponents from Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky and Michigan, Rea has Bowman Academy looking like one of the Hoosier State’s best less than four years after playing its first varsity game. The program is in just its second season of Indiana High School Athletic Association (IHSAA) eligibility.

A win over defending 2A state champion Fort Wayne Bishop Luers last Saturday propelled Bowman Academy, a public charter high school with just over 400 students, into MaxPreps.com’s Xcellent 25 national rankings this week. The 90-81 victory came in front of nearly 2,000 fans at the school's gym and was the latest in a series of history-making moments for the Eagles this winter.

“That was a crazy night,” Rea said of the win over Bishop Luers, which features 6-foot-7 Ohio State-bound forward Deshaun Thomas. “As far as having a sellout crowd, we haven’t seen that in this region for 20 or 30 years.  We had to turn away 200 or 300 people. There were cars everywhere, people offering $200 just to get in.

“Our guys performed and performed well.”

After going 19-3 a year ago with no seniors on the roster, it didn’t take the Eagles long to show they were all grown up this year.

Bowman beat Kentucky’s defending state champion, Covington Holmes, at the Marshall County Hoopfest in early December, stunning a team that earned a preseason national ranking from MaxPreps.

“That was the state championship for us,” Rea said. “That was the biggest win we had up to that point. I always felt we had the kids to compete. We don’t have one star like Ames (Iowa) or Bishop Luers. We have a bunch of role players. That was a defining point for us, finding out whether we were a contender or pretender.”

Wins over Broad Ripple, a solid 4A program from Indianapolis, and Bogan of Chicago followed. Those were two of Bowman’s only close games of the season. The Eagles have won 11 of their 15 games by 10 points or more and eight have come by 20 or more.

While Rea sees his team as a collection of role players and is reluctant to single out one player over another, the rest of Indiana and Big 10 coaches see plenty of starpower in sophomore DeJuan Marrero.

Illinois, Indiana, Purdue and Ohio State have offered the 6-6, 200-pound Marrero, who led the way with 19 points in the win over Bishop Luers.

“I would say he is a mix between Dennis Rodman and Kevin Garnett,” Rea said. “He is a double-double guy that hustles, dives on the floor – he’s the best garbage player in the world with some offensive ability. That’s what you are going to get.

“He’s a throwback player that does all the little things – the things prima donnas aren’t going to do.”

Marrero is part of what Rea dubs his “three-headed monster,” which also includes seniors Tyrae Robinson, a 6-1 guard, and Chris Bond, a 6-4 wing forward.

Robinson is averaging 17 points per game and elected not to sign in November in an attempt to attract new suitors during the season. The strategy appears to be working.

“He has long arms and an excellent wingspan. Coaches come to the gym to see DeJuan and love him,” Rea said. “Somebody is going to pick up this kid. He is lightning-quick, no single guy can defend him from baseline to baseline.”

Bond is posting 18 points and 15 rebounds per night, attracting attention from the likes of The Citadel, Southern Illinois-Edwardsville and Loyola-Chicago.

“In this region, everybody knows he is the man on this team,” Rea said. “He is a ‘tweener. He can hit the jumper, but he really doesn’t need to at this level because he gets to the rim so well.”

Rea also highlighted the play of senior guards Cylk Joseph and Nick Moore.

National rankings and state championship hopes probably weren’t a realistic thought just two years ago when the program went 7-7 and had difficulty even filling the schedule.

“These guys have been playing AAU together since they were 8 or 9 years old,” Rea said. “They chose to go to a charter school and sacrificed their freshmen and sophomore years. We had to go all the way to Rushville, Illinois, to play in a tournament (nearly 250 miles away). People just wouldn’t play us.

“We ran into obstacles, but it ended up being better for us. Instead of being locked in to eight games locally, we had to go out and find other games.”

Those games against top teams from around the Midwest should pay off beginning in late February when the Eagles being their march toward another historical feat – a state championship. No team from Gary has won a title since the 2001-02 season.

“I told our guys that they can be pioneers if they continue to work hard,” Rea said. “The best is yet to come. We can be the face of basketball in not only Gary, but the region and the state of Indiana if you work hard. It’s not just basketball, it’s academics, too. These guys understand that they better they do, the more responsibility they have.”

Bowman Academy’s quest continues Thursday against Fall Creek Academy of Indianapolis.

Weekend highlights

The Nike Extravaganza at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, Calif., will be the big ticket over the weekend. Saturday’s lineup features a pair of contests pitting Xcellent 25 teams. Host Mater Dei, ranked No. 6, takes on No. 14 Bishop Gorman (Las Vegas, Nev.) and No. 11 St. Patrick (Elizabeth, N.J.) tackles No. 24 Taft (Woodland Hills, Calif.).

A win for Mater Dei or Bishop Gorman would put that program in line for a run at the No. 1 ranking – provided they navigate successfully through their respective state playoffs (which will be a much tougher task for Mater Dei than Bishop Gorman).

St. Patrick was the nation’s top-ranked team just two weeks ago, but has suffered losses to Findlay Prep (Henderson, Nev.) and St. Benedict’s Prep (Newark, N.J.) since. Taft was beaten on back-to-back days at the MaxPreps Holiday Classic in December, but responded with an 8-0 run in January. A win against the Garden State power would mean complete redemption for the Toreadors.

St. Patrick and Taft missed playing each other at the aforementioned MaxPreps Holiday Classic in December. The Celtics captured the tournament title while the Toreadors lost their final two games after reaching the semifinals.

MaxPreps.com’s Mitch Stephens will report live from Santa Ana beginning Friday.

The other big game of the weekend will go down in Michigan, where No. 2 Northland (Columbus, Ohio) puts its perfect record on the line Saturday against No. 22 Detroit Country Day (Beverly Hills, Mich.) at Delta College in Saginaw.

A pair of potential first team All-Americans square off in that contest with 6-9 Northland senior Jared Sullinger, an Ohio State signee, and uncommitted Country Day senior guard Ray McCallum Jr. Sullinger is averaging 22.5 points and 12.5 rebounds per game. McCallum Jr., who is still considering Arizona, Florida, UCLA and Detroit, leads the Yellowjackets at 22.2 points per game to go along with 7.6 rebounds and 3.3 assists.

It’s the final out-of-state test for both teams before playoffs begin in their respective states.

Composite rankings

Fifteen teams own a spot in both the latest Xcellent 25 rankings and MaxPreps.com’s computer-generated Freeman Rankings.

Here is a composite look at where the nation’s elite stack up using both gauges;

Overall ranking. School (City, State) – Xcellent 25/Freeman Rankings, composite average
1. Northland (Columbus, Ohio) – No. 2/No. 3, 2.5
T2. Yates (Houston, Texas) – 1/6, 3.5
T2. St. Benedict’s Prep (Newark, N.J.) – 5/2, 3.5
4. Findlay Prep (Henderson, Nev.) – 10/1, 5.5
5. Paterson Catholic (Paterson, N.J.) – 4/10, 7.0
6. St. Patrick (Elizabeth, N.J.) – 11/4, 7.5
7. Mater Dei (Santa Ana, Calif.) – 6/11, 8.5
8. Bellaire (Texas) – 15/5, 10.0
9. Ames (Iowa) – 7/14, 10.5
10. Ridgeway (Memphis, Tenn.) – 16/8, 12.0
11. Melrose (Memphis, Tenn.) – 17/9, 13.0
12. Oak Hill Academy (Mouth of Wilson, Va.) – 12/15, 13.5
13. Wagner (San Antonio, Texas) – 23/7, 15.0
14. Jesuit (Portland, Ore.) – 21/12, 16.5
15. Detroit Country Day (Beverly Hills, Mich.) – 22/20, 21.5

Indiana’s Bloomington South (No. 3), North Carolina’s Christ School (No. 8) and Neumann-Goretti (No. 9) of Philadelphia are the highest-ranked teams in the Xcellent 25 not featured in the Freeman Rankings.

Vice versa, Florida’s Winter Park (No. 13), Marcus (No. 16) of Flower Mound, Texas, and California’s Gardena Serra (No. 17) are the top teams in the Freeman Rankings that didn’t get the nod in this week’s Xcellent 25.