Hoop dreams: 10 FMS basketball players sign D1 scholarships
It’s become a second-Wednesday-of-November tradition at Fishburne Military School.
“It means the program is progressing. We’re doing the right things. We have guys matriculating on to four-year schools and universities,” said FMS postgrad basketball coach Ed Huckaby, who saw 10 of his players sign letters of intent with Division I college programs on Wednesday.
The Caissons, ranked in the top five nationally on a stong 6-0 start to the 2011-2012 season, have their sights set on the program’s first national championship. The volume of players moving on to the next level shows why the talk about a national title is in the realm of the realistic.
“We’re underestimated right now,” said point guard Teven Jones, a 6’0″, 180-pounder from Kannapolis, N.C., who signed today with the University of Virginia to be part of a top-10 recruiting class for coach Tony Bennett.
Jones himself came in underestimated – without any significant scholarship offers following his senior season. He admitted to feeling like “giving up” at times in his senior season, before surreally becoming a hot prospect in the summer.
Two Caissons will be heading to Illinois-Chicago – 6’8″, 225-pound forward Jake Wiegand and 7’0″, 235-pound center Matt Gorski.
“I just fell in love with the coaching staff. They showed me a good time while I was up there. They showed me how their guys get to work every day. And it’s a great academic school. I know I’m going to get a great degree from there,” Gorski said.
Academics were also important to Cortell Busby, a 6’2″, 190-pound point guard who signed today with Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis – and his parents.
“The academic portion is very important to us. With the success that Cortell is going to experience there with the team, the academic aspect is a tremendous plus,” said his father, Tony.
Class of 2012 Signees
Teven Jones University of Virginia
Cortell Busby IUPUI
Jackson Trapp Winthrop
Khalil Alford Rider
Chris Bryant Florida Atlantic
Spencer Parker Bowling Green
Matt Gorski Illinois-Chicago
Jake Wiegand Illinois-Chicago
Josh Warren Tennesee-Chattanooga
Mo Camera Winston-Salem State
Link to Video Gallery featuring interviews with all 10 FMS signees.
FMS rallies to knock off Miller in Classic finale
A 20-1 Miller School run gave the Mavericks a 41-40 halftime lead over Fishburne. The Caissons broke open a close game with a 14-3 run in the second half en route to a 92-81 win in the finale of the FMS Tip-Off Classic.
“Basketball is a game of run,” said point guard Teven Jones (a UVa. commit), who had 12 points in a game effort after being sent to the hospital late Friday night with a bout of food poisoning.
“We faced some adversity, but we responded. I’m proud of my teammates for fighting through that,” Jones said.
Miller had to fight off some adversity to make it a game. Fishburne led 27-8 midway through the first half before the Mavs stormed back to tie the game at 28 on a three-pointer from the left wing by Devon Anderson.
It was 41-40 Miller at the half and 58-53 with 14 minutes left before the Caissons ripped off an 11-0 run capped off by a runner in the lane by Chris Bryant (Florida Atlantic) that made it 64-58 FMS with 11:25 to go.
An Anderson jumper two minutes later tied the game at 68, at which point it became Matt Gorski time. The 7’0″, 240-pound Illinois-Chicago recruit scored on power moves in the paint on back-to-back possessions to key the 14-3 run that broke it open for Fishburne.
“I had some trouble in the first half. Foul trouble was an issue. I just had to play smarter in the second half, pick my spots where I was going to be aggressive,” said Gorski, who led the Caissons with 16 points.
Bryant added 15 for Fishburne, which improves to 5-0 on the season with the win.
More FMS news at www.FishburneTimesConnect.org.
FMS climbs out of early hole to win big in Tip-Off opener
The game was barely two minutes old, Southern Tech was up 12-2, and Fishburne had already committed five turnovers.
“We’ve had a lot of slow starts. We’ve got to work on that. Because against good teams like this, this is what can happen,” said point guard Teven Jones (a UVa. commit) after the postgrad team’s 95-75 win Friday night in the opener of the FMS Tip-Off Challenge.
After coach Ed Huckaby called a timeout, Jackson Trapp (Winthrop) hit a long three that ignited a 14-3 Caisson run that put Fishburne in the lead at 16-15 with 13:14 left. Another Trapp three less than a minute later made it 19-17, and FMS never again trailed in the game.
Trapp was a key reason why – lighting up the scoreboard with 19 points in the first half and a team-high 24 for the game, including bookend threes at the first-half buzzer and on the first possession of the second half that extended the Fishburne lead to double digits for the first time.
“Me hitting threes like that opened up the middle and allowed our bigs to take over in the second half,” said Trapp, who sank six shots from behind the arc on the game and showed his athleticism on a second-half breakaway dunk for good measure.
Chris Bryant (Florida Atlantic) had 20 points for Fishburne. Karl Ziegler (uncommitted) added 16 points and Khalil Alford (Rider) had 11 for FMS, which improved to 4-0 on the young season.
Southern Tech’s Maiscei Greer led all scorers with a game-high 25 points.
“They have some outstanding shooters, very quick, talented guards. This was our first chance to get hit and respond. I thought we did a good job of regrouping and getting back to playing Fishburne basketball,” FMS assistant coach Derrick Robinson said afterward.
More FMS news at www.FishburneTimesConnect.org.
Fishburne PGs roll over VMI, 121-64
Seven-footer Matt Gorski scored 12 points to lead seven FMS players in double figures as the Caissons rolled to a 121-64 win over the Virginia Military Institute JV team Wednesday night.
The win came in the home opener for the Fishburne postgrad team and improved the squad to 3-0 on the season.
“We played hard. People could tell that. There were some defensive assignments that I thought we missed. When you play teams like Southern Tech and Miller School, like we have coming up, you have to be solid, so our focus is, we’ve got to be solid, we got this one, we’re happy, and let’s move on,” said Coach Ed Huckaby.
Fishburne will host the FMS Tip-Off Challenge Friday and Saturday. The Caissons take on Southern Tech Prep Friday at 6 p.m. and square off with Miller School on Saturday at 3 p.m.
Both are sure to be tough tests for the nationally-ranked PGs, who took control of the game with VMI early and had to weather just one storm, an 11-0 Keydet run late in the first half that briefly cut what had been a 22-point FMS lead in half.
It was 57-34 Fishburne at the half, and an extended 41-10 Caisson scoring spurt in the first 10 minutes of the second half erased what little doubt there may have been about the final outcome.
“They were a little undermanned, but they played hard. They played hard, and they made us play hard,” Huckaby said of the VMI squad, which got a game-high 20 points from Gregory Hempt.
UVa. recruit Teven Jones scored 11 for Fishburne on 4-of-10 shooting from the field before leaving the game early in the second half with stomach cramps.
“I liked what we were able to get from Teven. He was unselfish, distributed the ball, and played good defense,” Huckaby said.
More on Fishburne Military School at www.FishburneTimesConnect.org.
Josh Warren: From the bench to the big time
For Josh Warren, every day at Fishburne Military School is a “blessing.”
“Being at Fishburne is truly a blessing,” said Warren, a 6’7″, 225-pound postgrad basketball player from Marietta, Ga., who has already made a verbal commitment to Tennessee-Chattanooga for the class of 2012 and will make that commitment formal when he signs his letter of intent with the Division 1 Mocs next week.
Warren somehow slipped through the cracks not just on the recruiting trail, but in basketball in general. He rode the pines his entire high-school career before catching the attention of Huckaby in a camp last spring.
“We’re lucky he didn’t play much in high school. There’s no way this kid with this talent ends up here at Fishburne in this program if that doesn’t happen,” said Huckaby, calling Warren the most explosive player on his team.
Warren, for his part, was all smiles at media day last week.
“Being on the court with these guys,” he said, nodding back to the court, where his teammates were in the midst of warmups, “is truly a blessing. I can’t wait until the season starts. It’s going to be something special.”
For his mother, Ida Susan Collins, the Fishburne experience has been something special for her son even before the first tip-off of the 2011-2012 basketball season.
“My prayer was that he would get closer with God, and that he could gain maturity with the exposure here, and that he would learn that it’s OK to be smart and great, and also to see him develop into the young man that he wants to be,” Collins said.
Warren aspires to play basketball professionally and then follow Huckaby into coaching.
First things first, though.
“My goals, first of all, are to work hard, get my credit hours for college, second of all, become a better player, become as great as I can while I’m here,” Warren said.
FMS postgrad team prepped and ready for battle
Here’s how much respect the Fishburne Military School postgrad basketball team has been able to build in its two-plus years of existence: The team has yet to play a game, and already 10 FMS players have committed to sign with Division I college programs on National Signing Day next week.
“That’s a pretty amazing feat to get that many guys signed already at this point,” said Coach Ed Huckaby, whose team tips off the 2011-2012 season Wednesday night at home against the junior-varsity team from Virginia Military Institute.
And then the competition ramps up severely this weekend with the FMS Tip-Off Challenge and a pair of games against nationally-ranked foes in Southern Tech Prep and Miller School.
The ’11-’12 Caissons will likely have a heightened level of attention from local fans with top UVa. recruit Teven Jones, a 6’0″, 180-pound point guard from Kannapolis, N.C., leading the team into battle. What the new fans will see is a program that has “some very good players, good size, good depth, and more importantly, we’ve got guys who have very good character. How we’re going to play is smart, hard, tough and try to do things fundamentally sound every night to be successful,” Huckaby said.
You will hear that a lot from Huckaby – about doing things “the right way” from the most basic of building blocks.
“This program is not for everyone. if you have a hidden agenda, if it’s about me, me, me, then this is not the program that you want to be part of. It’s a unit here. It’s about us, about we,” Huckaby said.
Huckaby spent 11 years coaching at the college level, and that shows in his approach to getting young men ready for college – both on the court and off.
“This is a prep school. You’re preparing for college. You’re not preparing for high school,” said Huckaby, who operates the FMS program by the motto “Preparation for the Next Level.”
“From study halls to how we take the college courses here, how you deal with your professors and instructors here, scouting reports, your practices, your strength and conditioning routine … we try to make it a total experience for the guys who do come here,” Huckaby said.
Busby aims for improvement as player, student at FMS
Cortell Busby enrolled at Fishburne Military School for an extra year of high school with one goal in mind – to get a Division I college-basketball scholarship.
Busby, a 6’2″, 190-pound point guard from Chester, S.C.,, already has the scholarship in the bag before the Caissons play their first game this week.
Busby has committed to IUPUI (Indianapolis, Ind.) and will sign a letter of intent with the Jaquars in November. So now Busby is focused on making sure IUPUI gets the best incoming-freshman point guard that he can be.
“Going against the top-notch players that we have on our team every day has definitely made me improve my game,” said Busby, who gets to go up against UVa.’s top recruit in its class of 2012, Teven Jones, a fellow point guard, every day in practice.
“Practices here are basically college practices. It’s a college system. So we’re always working hard, always working on what we need to improve on, and just getting better as a team,” Busby said.
Off the court, Busby is focused on schoolwork – he wants to leave his year in the FMS postgrad program with a 4.0 grade point average.
“The overall experience of being in class and working on basketball every day – it’s been a good experience,” Busby said.
His mother, Laura, said Cortell was a “young” high-school senior.
“He was only 17 when he graduated. So we felt prep school would give him an extra year to prepare heading into college,” she said.
His father, Tony, feels the experience of coach Ed Huckaby, himself a former college point guard and a former college assistant coach, will be invaluable to Cortell.
“Being here gives him more development and a skillset that he definitely will need when he transitions to the D1 level,” Tony Busby said.
