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Hoop Group AC Jam Fest Notebook (July 15)

07/16/2018, 12:15am EDT
By Josh Verlin & Ray Dunne

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin) &
Ray Dunne (@raydunneBTB)
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ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- The first-ever Hoop Group Atlantic City Jam Fest took over the AC Convention Center this weekend, with 14 courts hosting teams from 14U through 17U for a weekend-long tournament that also serves as the championship for the Hoop Group Summer League.

Here’s a notebook from Sunday’s action, featuring the championship rounds of the 17U and 16U divisions:

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Thomas O'Neil (above) and the Middlesex Magic captured the 17U HGSL Championship. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

Thomas O’Neil (2019/Vermont Academy, Vt.)

As the weather has begun to heat up, so has Tommy O’Neill’s recruiting.

The St. John’s Prep grad has picked up seven offers since restarting his recruitment over again after deciding on a prep year. In the fall, the 6-foot-8 forward will be headed to Vermont Academy.

For now, O’Neill is starring on the Middlesex Magic 17U team. In Sunday’s Hoop Group Summer League playoffs, he averaged 15 points and almost 10 rebounds per game to lead Middlesex to the 17U HGSL title.

O’Neill showed a nice touch from long range in the quarterfinals, knocking down both of his 3-pointers. It’s a weapon that he believes will help both his team and his recruiting.

“I always could attack but now, if I can start shooting the three consistently, people have to respect that,” O’Neill said. “It will open up so many more opportunities.”

Another interesting facet of the power forward’s game is his solid ball handling. Late in the game, the team continuously trusts him with the ball despite a plentiful amount of guards on the floor. On top of his ball handling, O’Neill put the semifinals game on ice with a few clutch free throws down the stretch.

With his game rounding out, schools have taken notice. Currently, he has offers from University of Maryland Baltimore County, Vermont, Lafayette, Brown, Siena, Air Force, and Mount St. Mary’s.

Additionally, the forward has garnered interest from St. Joe’s, William & Mary, Elon, Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia. That’s certainly a step up from only holding two offers, which was the case for O’Neill prior to his decision to take a prep year.

“It’s really exciting. It’s been my dream as a kid, to be able to play at the highest level at college,” O’Neill said, “I worked at it really hard and I got a couple brothers playing in college and they already got the opportunity and I’m just trying to follow in their footsteps.”

One brother, Hugh O’Neill, plays at Bowdoin College (Maine) while the other brother, Harry O’Neill, plays at Johns Hopkins.

Primed to be the first brother to play Division I hoops, Tommy O’Neil plans to let the summer ride out before making a decision on where he will go for his collegiate career. However, the forward wants to have his mind made up before the prep season, in order to “focus on the season, focus on the team.” -- Ray Dunne

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Amir Britt (above) is joining his AAU teammate T.J. Berger at Westtown this fall. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

Amir Britt (2020/Westtown School, Pa.)

Growing up, Britt was an early-onset basketball junkie -- capable, he said, of naming every NBA MVP “since the 1950s” by the time he was eight years old. His attempts to play, however, didn’t typically go so great.

“I was really clumsy, I had two left feet, I couldn’t really catch the ball,” he said. “It was just bad.”

Slowly, Britt continued to grow, standing 5-9 by the end of his seventh grade season, when a growth spurt kicked in. Suddenly, going into eighth grade, he found himself 6-2.

“My skills started to develop then, my athleticism, and slowly but surely I’ve become a better player every day,” he said. “Just working out as much as possible, lifting every day other, as much as I can. Learning about the game, watching film, asking coaches what I can do better, what I need to improve on, stuff like that.”

Now entering his junior year of high school, Britt stands 6-6 and weighs 200 pounds, and he’s chasing his own basketball dreams. This weekend, he was a key reserve on the NJ Shoreshots squad that won the 16U championship, but he has bigger plans ahead.

For his first two years of high school, Britt, a native of Edison, N.J. went to Union Catholic High School in Scotch Plains. But he’s making the move over to the Keystone State this fall, attending Friends’ Schools League powerhouse Westtown for his junior year.

Britt’s connection to Westtown came through his NJ Shoreshots teammate, T.J. Berger, the son of Westtown head coach Seth Berger. Britt, interested in attending Westtown, approached the elder Berger to see if there would be a spot available for him; Berger replied in the affirmative.

“I always told my mom, like, that would be my dream school if it was ever offered to me, so she was like ‘go ahead and go,’” Britt said. “I took my visit, I loved the people, I love the coaching staff, I loved the teachers, everything about it. Location’s really nice, it’s a community at that school, a focus on academics, so I loved all of it.”

Britt’s still got some catching up to do to get his game at the level of recent Westtown grads like Mo Bamba (Texas/No. 6 pick in 2018 NBA Draft) and Cameron Reddish (Duke/expected lottery pick in 2019), who are just some of the recent Moose players to go on to Division I territory.

A 6-6 power forward isn’t exactly NBA territory, though, and Britt knows he’s got plenty of work to do if he wants to put himself in that group two years from now. He’s just hoping his new home provides a boost along the way.

“(Berger’s) made guys so much better in a short span of time,” Britt said, “and to reach my goals I feel like I had to go there and work even harder.” -- Josh Verlin

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Andrew Seager (above) is hoping he can show off his wing skillset this July. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

Andrew Seager (2019/Hun School, N.J.)

After playing with the East Coast Cyclones during his first 17U go-around last summer, when he was then a rising senior at Ocean Twp. (N.J.), and again in April after making the decision to go prep, Seager was left looking for a new program when the Cyclones didn’t field a 17U squad this July.

The lanky wing is happy to be with an SJ Hoops Elite team that has quite a few other players 6-6 and taller, sliding outside to play his natural small forward position.

“I like the height that we have,” he said. “I’m usually having to play down low and stuff but we have a lot of bigs on our team so I’m able to show my capability on the wing.”

A slender 6-7, 180-pound wing, Seager’s best asset is his ability to attack the rim off the bounce, which he did relentlessly all weekend long. A reliable 3-point stroke is still developing, but he’s got the ability to knock it down with space when he gets his feet set.

That length and scoring ability brought him two Division II offers for the class of 2018, from Wheeling Jesuit (W.Va.) and Felician (N.J.). But Seager was determined to chase the D-I dream, and through his former AAU coach got a connection with the Hun School, making the decision to do one more year before college just after the high school season ended.

Seager’s gotten some interest from Lafayette, visiting the Easton (Pa.) Patriot League school in late June. He also has the Felician scholarship still on the table for 2019.

The biggest issue for Seager is putting on muscle, something he’s hoping to do plenty of before he gets to college; he targeted a goal weight of 195-200 pounds, but had no timeline on when it could happen. The culprit, Seager said, was a rapid metabolism, despite the fact that he was eating “anything and everything in my pantry.

“When I get to Hun School, they have an athletic trainer, they said they’re going to put me on a meal program,” he continued. “Hopefully I can gain some weight there.”

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Quick Hits

-- The Shoreshots’ run to the 16U championship was certainly a full-team affair, with Matt Pooley’s group getting contributions from up and down the roster. Both 6-5 Gill St. Bernard’s wing William Soucie and 6-5 Delbarton School (N.J.) wing Jacob Sussman continued strong weekends, while 6-3 Wildwood Catholic sharpshooter Jacob Hopping was red-hot from 3-point range in all three games. Berger, who’s rapidly developing into much more than just a 3-point shooter, had more than flashes of impressive play, including a 30-footer to end the first half of a blowout quarterfinal win over Team Loaded 757. And reserve guard David Cross, a 5-11 point guard out of Bishop Eustace, gave them instant impact on the defensive end, and several buckets as well.

One more intriguing prospect to keep an eye on on this Shoreshots squad -- we’ve already written this summer about Berger, Soucie and Sussman -- is Wildwood Catholic guard Jahlil White. Only 6-3 at the end of the season, White is now a full 6-6 with guard skills, and is getting Division I interest of his own; Drexel, Delaware, St. Joe’s, Siena and Bryant have all checked in on the still-growing wing guard. If this group stays together for next year, they’ll draw a lot of coaches to the sidelines. But the crowds should be growing the next two weeks as well.

-- Despite Team Final Red’s quarterfinals exit from the 17U invitational bracket, Clovis Gallon Jr.  was still able to turn heads on Sunday morning. The 6-4 shooting guard had 13 points and five rebounds while displaying a nice stroke on his jumper. Outside of two forced up three pointers at the end of each half, he was 3-of-4 from beyond the arc. The rising senior has no standing offers, but has claimed interest from several schools, including Georgian Court, whose head coach Terrence Stewart was courtside.

Gallon’s teammate, Tyler Collier, also has gathered a solid amount of interest, ranging from PSAC schools to the Patriot League. The 6-8 forward is a strong presence inside with the ability to alter shots in the paint. Shippensburg is the only school currently offering the big man, who only scored four points but showed nice touch from the free throw line and good help defense.

“To be honest... I didn’t know that I could have potential in basketball. I didn’t really take it as seriously till probably around ninth or tenth grade” Collier said, “[I] started to have a dream to play college basketball...I got my first offer and it was like a dream come true.”

-- For the last year, it was tough for Andrew Delaney to quite get the attention he wanted. He transferred from Clearview (N.J.) to Blair Academy (N.J.) for his junior year, joining a program that finished runner-ups to St. Benedict’s in the NJ Non-Public ‘A’ state tournament but was loaded with talented basketball players; then, on the AAU circuit, he was part of an Albany City Rocks squad on the EYBL that was similarly deep. Now playing on the Jersey Shore Warriors 17U squad, he’s getting more of a chance to show what he can do on the court.

“I’m just trying to work on my strengths, a rip baseline, off-the-dribble jump shot and the ‘3’ are usually my go-to moves,” he said, “but I’m trying to work on my defense a lot more, on-ball defense, because now I’m guarding smaller guards.”

A 6-6, 210-pound wing forward and the younger brother of Villanova forward Tim Delaney, Andrew Delaney has a college-ready body and the versatility to play either the ‘3’ or the ‘4’, with a semi-reliable outside shot and the ability to put the ball on the floor for straight-line finishes. So far, he said, he’s gotten some interest from Holy Cross, and previously attended Penn and Princeton elite camps as well.

-- Charlie Gordinier starred in Jersey Shore Warriors 16U’s win over the NJ Pirates on Sunday morning, working the inside en route to 18 points and 12 boards. With his strong moves in the paint and a 6-foot-5, 220 pound frame, Charlie Gordinier has the look of a linebacker on the basketball court. He also has the skill of it off the floor. The rising junior currently plays both football and basketball, with recruiting interest in both. Holy Cross has been the only school to reach out in basketball thus far while schools from the top conferences of college football have started to talk to him.

“Football translates my toughness,” Gordinier said. “I bring my physicality from football to the basketball court.”


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