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Wood's "special" senior class hoping to end HS careers with titles

03/11/2021, 2:30pm EST
By Josh Verlin


Archbishop Wood's Rahsool Diggins (above) headlines a standout five-man senior starting lineup for the Vikings. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)

Rahsool Diggins’ record-breaking shot seemed easy.

A simple two-man game with classmate and close friend Daeshon Shepherd, the two Archbishop Wood seniors going through a motion they’d done hundreds of times. Shepherd started with the ball in the corner of Archbishop Carroll’s court, driving to his right and towards the lane. Diggins rotated into Shepherd’s corner spot, a defender stuck between stopping Shepherd or going out to the shooter, leaving Diggins too wide open from deep. A flick of the wrist, a high arc, nothing but net.

It seemed easy, because it was easy.

The shot that dropped through the hoop was more than career points 1,385 through 1,387 for Diggins. It also lifted him past 2018 Wood grad Tyree Pickron (1,386 points) for tops on the school’s all-time scoring list.

“When the Tweet came out that I was about 80 points away,” Diggins said, “I told (Pickron) that he’s got four more games, four more games to enjoy it. And that’s what happened.”

But for Diggins and the rest of the Vikings, this season is about so much more than the UConn commit setting scoring records. It’s about a memorable senior class which features five future college ballplayers trying to live up to near-flawless expectations, and a group of friends getting one final go-around on the hardwood.

“They’re a special group,” Wood coach John Mosco said. “They’re all friends on and off the court, they really play together. Seeing these guys develop, and come as kids and getting older, gaining all their accomplishments and sticking together, seeing how friendly they are all off the court in the locker room, it’s up there with one of the other groups that I’ve (coached) there.”

The featured members of Wood’s senior class:


Daeshon Shepherd (above) will begin his college career at La Salle this fall. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

  • Diggins, a 6-foot-3 point guard ranked No. 46 in the class of 2021 by Rivals, the highest-rated and most highly-sought-after of the group, who picked UConn over offers from Villanova, Virginia Tech, Rutgers, Penn State, Kansas, and many more.

  • Shepherd, a 6-5 wing guard who’ll be playing his college ball at La Salle. While initially known for his high-flying athleticism and versatility, Shepherd’s become a much more consistent 3-point shooter and defender.

  • Muneer Newton, a muscular 6-5 wing forward. The only member of the starting five not yet committed to a college, he’s picked up a pair of scholarship offers this season from D-IIs Lock Haven and Chestnut Hill, with more inquiring.

  • Jaylen Stinson, a 6-0 point guard committed to James Madison. Stinson entered his senior year with 818 points scored in high school and just passed the 1,000-point mark on Wednesday, the fourth member of the group to accomplish that feat.

  • Marcus Randolph, a 6-3 left-handed shooting guard committed to Richmond. Randolph spent his first two years at Willingboro (N.J.) and had offers from Temple, La Salle, Drexel, Loyola (Ill.) and more before his commitment.

They’re not the only seniors on the roster: forward Robert Jackson, a Cincinnati football commit, comes off the bench, as do John DonahueShane McNichols and Dan Prior when the leads get large enough. 

But it’s a starting five that plays the vast majority of the minutes for Mosco, accounting for almost all the on-court production for the Vikings. It’s a group that could hang with any high-level prep team in the country, lacking a true big man but possessing everything else you’d want: quality defenders, quality shooters, quality passers, a selfless bunch that plays hard at both ends.

Of course, all that chemistry didn’t arrive overnight. The makings of the bonds that became Wood’s starting lineup go back well beyond their years at the Warminster (Pa.) Catholic school.


Jaylen Stinson (above, last year) scored his 1,000th point on Wednesday as Wood went 14-0. (Photo: Mark Jordan/CoBL)

“I knew Sool since I was younger, when we were really young, because my older cousin is a good friend of his dad, and we would go over to my great-aunt’s house (together),” Stinson said. “I knew him since we were really young.”

“It was just a small world with Sool,” Newton added. “It’s crazy, his dad’s best friend is like my cousin, and we just hit it off from there.”

By 7th grade, Diggins played AAU ball for Team Final, part of the Nike-backed program’s middle school division. The next year, going into 8th grade, he was joined by Newton, Shepherd and Randolph. Stinson joined the travel hoops squad as the group entered high school, marking the first time the quintet played together.

“That team was pretty successful and you could just tell that those guys wanted to be together,” said Rob Brown, Team Final’s program director. “You could see that they had chemistry on the court, and at the time when Marcus and Jaylen were in different situations for school, you could tell in the summer they really looked forward to playing with each other.”

They weren’t high school teammates immediately. Diggins, Newton and Shepherd went to Wood from the get-go, with Diggins and Shepherd immediately jumping into contributing roles while Newton didn’t see any varsity time. Stinson played his freshman year at The Haverford School, joining Wood as a sophomore, officially marking the Vikings’ 2021 class as ‘loaded.’ 

That 2018-19 season, Wood went 20-9 (9-5 PCL), losing to Bishop McDevitt in the league quarterfinals before making a run to the PIAA 5A state championship game, where they lost 74-64 to a senior-laden Moon Area High School. Diggins, Shepherd and Stinson were the team’s three leading scorers, but their inexperience hurt them in games against the top tier of the PCL and state.

However, there was still plenty of reason to believe there was something special building.

“Tenth grade year, we played Jonathan Kuminga [and Our Savior New American] at Slam Dunk to the Beach, and we beat them,” Newton recalled. “After that, I was like, yeah, we’re going to be on something now.”


Marcus Randolph (above) was the last of the five to arrive at Archbishop Wood. (Photo: Mark Jordan/CoBL)

When Randolph arrived at Wood a year later, not only was the Team Final group reunited, but now they were experienced upperclassmen ready to rumble. The transition from summer ball to the Catholic League was nearly flawless, and it was clear the Vikings had taken another big step forward.

“We would play with each other, and it was natural, it felt like we’ve been playing forever together, it was just clicking,” Stinson said. “We were looking at each other like we could really do something big. For us to all be in the same grade, it was just like, yeah, we really could do something as long as everyone put the work in.”

Wood certainly made a splash at the beginning of last season, taking Virginia powerhouse Paul VI to seven overtimes in a 130-128 loss that felt like it truly didn’t have a loser. They then ripped off wins in 12 of their next 13 before losing to Neumann-Goretti. They didn’t lose again until the Catholic League semifinals against Roman Catholic, which featured future NBA center Jalen Duren amongst its bevy of Division I prospects.

There was still the PIAA 5A crown to shoot for, the program having won it only once in its history: in 2017, behind the likes of Villanova’s Collin Gillespie and another standout senior group that included Keith Otto (Moravian) and Matt Cerruti (Lock Haven); the other senior class Mosco had in mind when he thought about his current one. 

The 2020 version looked well on its way to making it back to Hershey, winning its first two state games by identically 72-45 finals. But COVID shut things down before a quarterfinal matchup against Dallas Area, leaving Wood’s 2021 class with only one year left to capture two titles that only the 2017 group and no other had won.

Given one final shot, the Vikings have looked like a group on a mission. 

Wood finished the Catholic League-only regular season an unbeaten 14-0 this time around, though they had their share of challenges: Neumann-Goretti and Bonner both came within a point, McDevitt within two, and Archbishop Ryan by five in their regular-season finale Wednesday night. 


Muneer Newton (above) has had a breakthrough senior year, picking up his first scholarship offers. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

It’s a group that Mosco trusts on the court, and he’s adjusted his coaching style to match.

“I let them be them,” the 8th-year head coach said, “and you don’t have to scream and holler and get on them as much, and you can talk to them more, do less [screaming] at practice, because they know everything.”

“He always gives us freedom, he trusts his team a lot, because...he knows we want to win, too,” Diggins said. “We want to win, we’re intense, and so is he. He’s crazier than us, though.”

The Catholic League playoff picture has shifted over the last month, going from only a championship game if every team played every game to the current situation, two semi-finals on Saturday and a championship game Monday at O’Hara. Wood doesn’t yet know who it’ll be hosting in the semifinals, whether it’s La Salle, Archbishop Ryan, or Devon Prep; Roman Catholic is locked in as the No. 2 seed and Neumann-Goretti is done for the year due to COVID.

The Vikings are happy to be in the spot they wanted to be all along, but they know they’re down to their final few games with this group. There’s no five-game run through the state tournament ahead; only seven district-championship teams make the PIAA 6A bracket this year, meaning Wood would need three wins to hoist a trophy, playing in the state's largest classification for the first time.

After that, they Wood seniors will go their separate ways, to their various college programs. They'll see each other in the future on the court and off it, but they know this crucial chapter of their basketball story is coming to an end.

“We’re soaking it in very much, this is our last year as seniors and we try to get the guys, our seniors who are on the bench, some time also,” Newton said. “We soak it in a lot.”

“We see each other every day outside of school, hang with each other, it’s going to hurt when we all go to school separately,” Diggins said. “It’s going to take a lot of getting used to because I’ve never played with anybody else but them.” 

“It feels good to be able to just know that we’re in a good position right now to be the champions, because that’s all we wanted to do in the first place,” Stinson said. “But then again, it kinda went by quick. I’m going to miss it.”


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