City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Last February, Westtown School’s head coach Seth Berger headed up to Dobbs Ferry (N.Y.) to watch the Masters School and sophomore guard Brandon Randolph, who had applied to the West Chester (Pa.) boarding school for his junior year.

What Berger saw from the guard was a 27-point performance that proved the young man’s scoring ability, but there was a glaring weakness in his game.

“When he did his visit, I said I don’t think you understand just how hard the kids play who play Division I basketball,” Berger said. “And he said ‘my defense is good,’ and I said ‘Brandon, your defense isn’t good.’”

It wasn’t the only time Berger would remind Randolph, both before and after the Bronx native decided that Westtown was going to be where he’d spend his junior year of high school.

“Definitely remember that conversation,” Randolph said on Friday after Westtown beat Lawrenceville Prep, 58-43, at Philadelphia University. “Over the phone, in person, almost every day. I guess he got into me, and I got better.”

Indeed he did, proving to his new coach within a week or two after getting to his new school in September that he was ready to take that end of the court as seriously as he took his ability to put the ball through the hoop.

That was the missing piece to the puzzle. Because at 6-foot-6 and 175 pounds, with a lanky, athletic frame that Berger described as “not a weak skinny, he’s a strong skinny,” and easy ability to score from all three levels, Randolph looks the part of someone with a long future in basketball if he puts it all together.

“He does so many things you can’t teach, and now when you add the effort thing to it...now you’ve got a kid who’s really talented, who wants to get better, willing to learn and play hard? At 6-6, really athletic and shoots the heck out of the ball?” Berger said. “That’s a high-major kid.”

Clearly, coaches are starting to agree.

In the last two weeks, Randolph has picked up offers from Seton Hall, Wake Forest, Virginia Tech and Vanderbilt.

The offers are extra sweet for Randolph, considering he missed the entire AAU season with a broken leg suffered on the first day of the spring that college coaches could watch high school prospects. It wasn’t until preseason workouts that he first got back out in front of coaches, and it hasn’t been until the last month or so that they’ve been able to watch him in live-game action.

“It feels great, it feels like I’m being recognized now,” he said. “I think I’ve been more aggressive, going to the basket, rebounding. I’m definitely getting better at passing, and my teammates are definitely helping me with that.”

Those teammates he speaks of are high-major targets themselves. Junior center Mohamed Bamba, a top-20 prospect in his class, has offers from the likes of Kentucky, Duke, Syracuse and Villanova, along with 20-plus others. Another junior, 6-5 wing Najja Hunter, has offers from Minnesota, Drexel, Iona and more.

Sophomore Cameron Reddish, another 6-6 guard, is one of the top 2018 prospects in the country and already has high-major offers of his own with more than two years until he arrives on a college campus.

Reddish is the only Southeastern Pennsylvania local; Bamba and Hunter are both from the NYC metropolitan area, and like Randolph play with the PSA Cardinals on Nike's Elite Youth Basketball League (EYBL) during the AAU season.

“When I applied, they told me it was a great school, that’s it," Randolph said. "I think it worked out well.”

That's a statement certainly everyone involved with Westtown basketball would agree with.

"I didn’t know if he was going to be low, mid or high, but he was a Division I player," Berger said of his initial impression. "But I didn’t think he was going to be this good.”