Your new No. 1-ranked HS hoops team...

O.J. Mayo, the nation's top senior, returns to his hometown to play on a prep team that already has three high-level D-I prospects.

http://www.herald-dispatch.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060829/SPORTS02/60829011


I only mention this because I grew up in Huntington, and I can't believe how good this team is going to be.

 

Sydney Dean and Billy Hoyle would make the team complete.

 

Isn't this OJ Mayo's third (at least) HS team?

 

Is he arbitration eligible yet?

 

Damn close.

 

mayo played in kentucky as an 8th grader, and apparently in that state you can play varsity in 8th grade. he then went to north college hill as a freshman, played three years there and will now be leaving it. so it's his second high school, third high school team

 

Anyone else get the feeling this kid is destined for a Maurice Clarett-type of fall?

His professional prospects are much better than Clarett's, but with all the hype and handlers and garbage Mayo has been dealing with for years, I can't help but think it will hurt him in the end. Pat Forde wrote a great story about Mayo a couple years ago, where he chronicled the difficulty he had trying to get through all of Mayo's handlers to score an interview — which never happened.

 

Exactly. And going to USC isn't going to help with avoiding distractions.

 

Mayo will go to the highest bidder. For a year.

 

What, you mean he isn't going to my alma mater, Georgia State?

 

By USC, do you mean Southern Cal or South Carolina?

 

USC is Trojan USC. And yes, I can totally see the Clarrett parallels with Mayo. He just seems different from, say, LeBron, even though both have been touted as the greatest since they were in middle school. Something about Mayo just seems to indicate that he won't pan out the way LeBron has.