City of Basketball Love

By Corky Blake
+ Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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The Mid-Atlantic Independent School Team Camp was held Friday through Sunday with top local prep programs — including from the Inter-Ac, Friends’ Schools League, plus Perkiomen School, Hill School, Cristo Rey — and beyond heading to play in front of college coaches at Executive Education Charter in Allentown during the June live period.

CoBL had writers jumping around to the four courts of play throughout the weekend, getting eyes on as many games as we could. Here’s the third notebook from the event focused on individual players and their recruitments:

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2025 MAISTC Week 1 Coverage
Standouts: June 22 (Sun.)
Notebooks: Recruiting Pt. 1 | Recruiting Pt. 2 | Recruiting (Pt. 3) | Recruiting (Pt. 4)

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Darnell Lloyd (2026 | Perkiomen School)

Not many high school seniors walk away from Division I scholarship offers.

Darnell Lloyd, a 6-10 athletic big who played at St. Andrew’s School in Middletown, Delaware, did just that. Midway through his senior season he decided it was in his best interest to go the post-graduate route.

“I believed an extra prep year with a prestigious team would help me a lot to develop for a college with my body and be better prepared for a college schedule,” Lloyd said. “I was looking around and one of my old AAU teammates, Gabe Tanner, went to Perkiomen and told me how great it was. Their coaches reached out, and I decided to go to Perkiomen.”

Tanner, a three-year starter at Perkiomen, is part of the Philadelphia area pipeline to Florida Gulf Coast where former Penn State coach and Episcopal Academy graduate Pat Chambers is the head coach.

Lloyd said he had offers from Delaware, La Salle and Rider, but is betting on himself by joining coach Harry Morra’s program at Perkiomen in hopes his options will expand.

This weekend showed Lloyd his decision to prep a year was the right one. On Sunday against Episcopal Academy, which didn’t have a big front line, Lloyd had his way at times with three dunks and a handful of putbacks. Later in the day, the wiry 195-pound Lloyd sometimes struggled to keep Woodmere Academy’s 6-9 Sylvanus Tabe and 6-10 Caleb Ourigou wide-bodies off the glass.

On Saturday afternoon, Lloyd refused to back down from Blair Academy’s 6-10, 240-pound man-child Kamsi Awaka but usually ended up losing the battle in the paint when Awaka would dislodge him.

“It’s been a step up for me. There are some stronger guys here,” Lloyd said. “I have to get my body right, and I also have to work on fronting. But I feel like a couple weeks, a couple months with the team I will be prepared. I can hold them off for a little while but most of them have at least 20 pounds on me, so I have to learn another trick to hold them off rather than use all your weight because that’s not going to work.”

In fairness to Lloyd and his fellow post-grad teammates, this was their first weekend of competition together after only a week or two of practice. The Panthers showed glimpses of their potential as Lloyd began converting point guard Elijah Crispin’s lob passes into dunks.

“This was our first couple of games together so it’s going to be rough at first,” Lloyd said. “Over the course of the four games we got way better as a team.” — Corky Blake

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Ben Natal + Zane Conlon (2026 | Hill School) 

The Hill School’s two newest post-graduates are familiar names to area hoops fans. 

Conlon, a 6-5 forward, starred at Devon Prep, whom he helped lead to back-to-back PIAA state championships. Natal, a 6-3 guard, came out of Central York, the 2024 PIAA Class 6A title winners, adding on a District 3 crown as a senior. 

They’re joining a program that finished as runner-ups in the PAISAA state tournament, and know that their collective winning experience in high school left them well-equipped to step right in and make an impact in a bid to make it one step further.

“I think some of the things that I learned at Central, definitely I can translate and bring over to Hill,” Natal said. “Winning those state championships and being on a winning team definitely helps. Being a good teammate, being a good player, making simple plays, winning plays. Small things that can change the game.”

The two both started for Hill in a win over Malvern Prep on Sunday, though it was Caleb Jameson’s 30-point outing that stole the show. It’s very much the beginning of their almost-year at Hill, the team only getting in a few practices before four games over the course of the weekend.

“It’s great, all the guys are super-cool,” Conlon said. “We’ve only been together for a couple days, got a whole week ahead, but it’s been really good so far.”

Both chose to extend their high school careers in hopes of attracting Division I coaches. Natal, who announced the decision last year, pulled in offers from  Loyola (Md.), Colgate, Hampton, Pepperdine and Chattanooga once he moved to the 2026 class, schools he said are all still in contact. 

Conlon, who announced his decision after his senior year at Devon Prep, had his decision validated when the Naval Academy became his first Division I offer after an elite camp there earlier this month. 

“I was shocked,” he said. “I went to the camp, it was so cool. I met a lot of their players, talked to all of their coaches, they all seemed really nice. But yeah, it was a shock to me. I’ve been working for it for so long, so to finally have someone say those words to me was awesome.”

It’s going to take some time for both to adjust to playing in the Mid-Atlantic Prep League and consistently going up against 18 and 19-year-olds rather than typical high school players, even though they both played at a high level to begin with. Natal’s had some exposure to that on the Adidas circuit, playing with K-Low Elite’s 17s this summer. 

“It’s just making simple plays, you play with a lot of great talent around you so you don’t have to do too much always,” he said. “Just playing within the team and not trying to force anything.”

Though Hill went 3-1 in the first weekend, there’s clearly lots of work to do ahead to make it back to whatever Division I arena will host the PAISAA championships next March, with an always-tough field of private and prep school teams standing in their way. 

“First is getting comfortable with them off the court, I think that’s the biggest thing,” Conlon said. “Once we create the bond off the court, it’ll pick up on the court and then mesh how we play.” — Josh Verlin

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Gabe Hornberger (2026 | Peddie School, N.J.)

Gabe Hornberger was right at home with his Peddie teammates in Executive Education Academy’s spacious and most importantly air-conditioned field house this weekend as temperatures outside rose into the high 80s.

Hornberger, more than any other player during the first weekend of the independent schools team camp, should have felt comfortable in his surroundings. The Nazareth, Pa., resident played his first three seasons for Executive Education in Allentown before transferring to Peddie last season and reclassifying to the Class of 2026.

“It got built in February of my junior year, so I had it for about six months before I left,” Hornberger said of the four-court facility that is separate from Executive Education’s main gym.

In truth, Hornberger’s high IQ game travels on any court. The 6-4, 200-pound combo guard has been drawing interest from Ivy and Patriot League schools along with teams in the MAAC.

Recently, he said, more coaches have been reaching out to him, and Hornberger’s contributions for Peddie certainly weren’t unnoticed by the large contingent of D-I coaches on hand.

“I want to show (coaches) my skill set and show I’m a good team player and make good decisions,” said Hornberger who wants to become a civil engineer. “They like my shooting. I can stretch the floor. They like my decisions, I’m a really good glue guy on the court, make the right decisions. I don’t need the ball and I don’t need to take a lot of shots. I just want to win and wanting to win is really important, I think, to college coaches.”

Here's a sampling of Hornberger’s contributions in just the second half of Sunday afternoon’s 73-48 romp over Bridgeport Prep:

He expanded a 30-20 halftime lead to 38-22 with a pair of 3-pointers.

He slipped a pass to 6-8 post-grad Sean Griffin, the former Bishop Shanahan standout, for a dunk.

He kept his dribble while creating space in the lane to feed a new teammate for an easy layup.

He hit another 3-pointer before earning and dropping in two free throws after going strong to the basket with his left hand.

All the while, Hornberger ensured his teammates were properly spaced offensively while contributing a handful of defensive rebounds. Hornberger has honed the skill of seeing plays develop before they ultimately happen.

“It’s from playing so much and wanting to win and wanting to make each other better,” Hornberger said. “Seeing myself compete and seeing my teammates compete, that’s something we have the right environment for at Peddie.” — Corky Blake

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Dieudonne Mushipu (2026 | College Achieve, N.J.)

Whatever his older brother Paul wanted to do, Dieudonne Mushipu wanted to do.

Growing up in Toronto, two years younger than his brother, with high-level athletics in his family, Duedonne played all sorts of sports growing up: football, soccer, swimming. 

“Whatever my older brother fell into, I just wanted to follow into what he did,” he told CoBL.

Eventually, basketball stuck. Mushipu started his high school years at United Scholastic in his hometown, but eventually realized he needed a change if he wanted to reach a higher level. So he spent his junior year at St. Benedict’s Prep (N.J.), playing for the Grey Bees. 

“[I wanted] competition, and less distraction,” he said. “At home, a lot of friends, a lot of people are there. I wanted to cut off all distractions and I feel like when I went to Benedict' and cut off all the distractions it was me vs. the world at that point.”

When longtime head coach Mark Taylor left St. Ben’s this spring, Mushipu needed a new spot for his senior year; he wound up at College Achieve (N.J.), playing for another longtime successful N.J. powerhouse coach in Dave Boff, coming down from Canada to make his first appearance with them this weekend. 

“I haven’t gotten a single practice in,” he said. “I came in on Friday night, and slept over and then Saturday morning had my first game.”

A physically built 6-6 205-pound wing guard, Mushipu came off the bench for College Achieve in a win over Malvern Prep to close out the event early Sunday afternoon, but he still impressed with a 12-point, six-rebound, two-assist performance as he continually slashed to the rim and finished at the basket at a good clip. 

He said that while he was at St. Ben’s, he had been in contact with coaches from Bowling Green, Central Michigan and Western Michigan, but has yet to receive his first collegiate offer. This summer, he’s working on improving his outside shooting to prove that he can be more than just an attacking wing. 

I feel as if one-on-one game, going to the rim,” he said, “I feel I’m pretty much unstoppable.” — Josh Verlin

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