Why are Sacramento prep basketball players leaving? Here’s what coaches and player say
Jared McCain is a prominent face in high school basketball. The 6-foot-3 senior guard committed to Duke earlier this year. McCain grew up in Sacramento and spent a majority of his life in the capital city before moving to Southern California in middle school.
McCain is preparing for his final season at Centennial High School in Corona. He helped lead the Huskies to a state Open Division championship this past spring. After that game, he was flooded with fan attention at Golden 1 Center, taking pictures and signing autographs.
That’s what happens when you have almost a half-million Instagram followers and 1.7 million on TikTok. Could he have achieved the same fame had he stayed in Sacramento?
The reason he left was simple: McCain wanted to raise his national profile. And players don’t achieve fame and earn Duke scholarships by staying in Sacramento.
His departure is part of a trend. In the past six years, some of the Sacramento-area’s best players left town to make their names elsewhere. The area has plenty of basketball talent, but the 2.4 million people living in the metro area just aren’t enough for the best of the best.
“Sacramento is a hidden gem, there’s just not much exposure out there,” McCain told The Bee in March. “We experienced that with my brother in high school. Southern California has so many opportunities everywhere you go. There are so many places to get looked at and there are way more AAU teams. Everything is amplified when you come down here. You just have more opportunities.”
A few years ago, the McCain family had no plans to move. They had just bought a house in Folsom. Jared’s older brother, Jayce, graduated from Folsom High School. Jared would’ve likely attended Folsom had he stayed in the area.
But the family wanted to boost Jared’s stature in the basketball world. Jared first moved south by himself. Then the whole family came along.
“It was a conscious decision we made when we moved down here,” Jared’s father Lance McCain said. “We had just bought a brand-new house in Folsom. We had no intention of leaving except we started looking at the basketball side of things. I just wanted to put him in a more competitive situation. Everything we did ended up working out perfectly.”
Before the move, Jared played for one of the top AAU teams in the country, the Compton Magic. They are based in Southern California, which meant the family was commuting from Sacramento to Southern California for Jared to attend AAU events.
Before the McCain family relocated to Southern California, Jared lived with the Askew family while he finished middle school.
The Askew family also moved to Southern California for basketball reasons. Devin Askew played at Mater Dei before committing to Kentucky. He spent last season at Texas and transferred to Cal this past offseason.
The youngest Askew brother, Jordan, is a freshman teammate of McCain’s at Centennial.
“I watched Devin Aksew’s success growing up when they moved to southern California,” McCain said. “... We went up a few times to look at (Southern California) and we found out there was a homeschooled basketball school. I did that my eighth-grade year. It was kind of me persuading (my family) I wanted to go down there to take basketball more seriously.”
Sacramento to Prolific Prep
In the summer of 2017, The Bee’s reigning Player of the Year, Jordan Brown, left for Prolific Prep. The Napa-based basketball academy doesn’t offer any varsity sports other than basketball. Boys go there to be immersed in the sport and work with trainers and coaches on a full-time basis, competing against other prep schools around the nation.
Brown, who spent the first three seasons of his prep career at Woodcreek in Roseville, was ranked as one of the top recruits in the country and was a McDonald’s All-American. He started his college career at Nevada, spent two years at Arizona and is entering his second season at Louisiana.
His move started a trend for Sacramento-area players. A few years after Brown made the move to Prolific Prep, Coleman Hawkins arrived at the Napa school. Hawkins spent his first two years at Antelope High School.
Most of the Sacramento high school basketball players who have left share a common theme. They have “Sacramento” or “916” in their social media bios. They don’t hate Sacramento. They just know taking their talent elsewhere will raise their stock.
“You couldn’t compare Sacramento high school basketball to playing on the Grind Session with Prolific Prep,” Hawkins said. “Prolific Prep plays everybody. It doesn’t matter who or where. We will go to your place to play. I was playing that summer with Dream Vision. Jeremy Russotti (the founder of Prolific Prep) was coming to our games. The head coach, Billy McKnight, was coming to our games. They were just feeding me insight and that’s finally when I made the decision that I’m going to go to Prolific kind of as a basketball decision.”
Hawkins added later, “I definitely appreciate (Sacramento). ... I was wanting a whole new opportunity and to kind of blaze a path for people in Sacramento. In my mind, it was a basketball decision but at the same time I was thinking I’m getting out of this city as a sophomore in high school. There’s nothing left for me here.”
Basketball players at Prolific Prep attend school at Napa Christian, a very small private school adjacent to the basketball practice gym. Prolific Prep plays all home games at Napa Valley College. The team is mostly on the road, playing at tournaments against the best high school players in the country.
The competition is a key reason Hawkins and others made the move. Hawkins is entering his junior season at Illinois. He credits Prolific Prep for helping his get outside of his comfort zone and developing him into a Big Ten player.
“The main thing was realizing where I was at as a player,” Hawkins said. “… I’ve seen it to where a lot of people don’t come to a realization or come down to the reality that maybe they’re not good or they’re scared to push themselves to the next level. I wasn’t scared of that at all. I wanted the exposure and I wanted to be playing against the top players every game. I didn’t want to be stuck in Sacramento. Being 6-foot-8 at the time, being forced to play (center) in high school. I’m scoring 40 every game, breaking every record at Antelope. I didn’t want to do that. Easily could’ve of but it wouldn’t have done nothing for me.
“A lot of people tried to say (when I left Antelope) I went Hollywood which was never true. People kind of just fade away. It’s definitely for the better.”
Two other Sacramento-area players, Isa Silva and Ben Roseborough, made the move to Prolific Prep but didn’t complete a full season at the school.
In August 2020, when a high school basketball season seemed unlikely because of COVID-19, Silva decided to attend Prolific Prep while staying a student at Jesuit High School. It was an unprecedented move because all Prolific Prep players attend Napa Christian. But the pandemic made it possible to attend Zoom classes at Jesuit while playing for Prolific Prep.
Silva practiced with Prolific Prep for a few months before returning to Jesuit. He didn’t appear in a game in Napa and was able to play his senior season that spring.
Roseborough made the switch to Prolific Prep in the middle of his sophomore season at Sacramento Charter High School last winter. He appeared in games but transferred back to enroll at his neighborhood school in Monterey Trail in Elk Grove.
Because of Sac-Joaquin Section ByLaw 207.B, it’s unclear if Roseborough will be eligible for the upcoming season. Prep schools are not sanctioned high schools in California. If a player leaves for a prep school and returns 12 or more months after, they will be granted immediate eligibility. If not, they risk having to sit out a full season.
Coaches hope to raise up Sacramento
Monterey Trail coach Robert Fields has been on both sides. He lost his top player during the COVID-19-shortened season Varick Lewis, to Southern California Academy before the spring 2021 season.
Lewis transferred because of the uncertainty of if there would be a high school season. He returned the following school year and is entering his senior year.
Fields says the solution to keeping players in their hometown is supporting them and giving them the resources needed to succeed and get exposure.
“We need more support among players, coaches and fans,” Fields said. “Sometimes kids may feel alienated or don’t have that same support so they may go elsewhere to try and find it. That will go a long way.”
He added, “It’s just a matter of building a (basketball) community here in Sacramento. And letting these kids know that not only their coaching staff supports them but other coaches, fans and players really support them. They don’t have to find that elsewhere.”
Whitney coach Nick French, who also serves as the athletic director at the school has a different stance. He thinks that once a player goes the prep route, that’s where they should stay.
“We have had some really good talented players to come out of this area,” French said. “There are plenty of examples of how (the prep route) has worked out. When it doesn’t work out and the kid comes back to the high school setting. What concerns me about that is how does a kid that has gone to a prep school for a year or two, not gone to school, how are they able to jump back into the comprehensive high school public school setting? We are forgetting about why we are here. It’s student-athlete not athlete-student.”
A bigger platform
Guss Armstead has been training Sacramento area high school, college and professional players for over 30 years.
He’s worked with some of the best athletes in the area. Armstead knows if a player wants to play against the best and reach the professional ranks, switching to a high-profile school might be the answer.
“The kids now look for bigger opportunities as far as a platform,” Armstead said. “For the high school teams, most of the kids are spread out. If you go to a bigger school, you can kind of play your natural position and play along with higher level players. … Some kids and whoever is advising them opt for that type of environment. It’s been a wave the past six to eight years.”
Jared Waters has trained high school, college and professional players for 12 years. He graduated from Vacaville High School in 2006.
Waters worked with Askew and McCain before they moved to Southern California. He said the math is simple for an excellent high school player.
“There’s just not enough good high school teams,” Waters said. “There’s not enough competition (in Sacramento). …(Devin and Jared) going to Los Angeles created that level of urgency. To grow, there has to be a standard to reach to and Sacramento is so limited in the talent level and the standard that people get that false reality.
He added, “If you’re in Los Angeles, it creates urgency to get better, faster and work harder. The plethora of really good players and the standard that is set to be good in Los Angeles is way more difficult and way higher of a goal to reach than being considered good in Sacramento.”
Waters also think Sacramento players leave because high school coaches don’t attract enough recruiting attention. The Sacramento area last year didn’t have a Division l scholarship boys’ basketball player. Darrion Williams would’ve earned one, but he moved from Capital Christian to Bishop Gorman in Las Vegas after his sophomore year. He was the Nevada Gatorade Player of the Year last season and earned a scholarship to Nevada.
“The high school coaches (in Sacramento) don’t push recruiting for their kids,” Waters said. “The coaches at Mater Dei have real relationships with like Pac-12, ACC and Big-12 schools. Because those schools respect Los Angeles basketball so much they know they need to develop those relationships to get those kids.”
He added, “If Jared (McCain) was up here doing what he was doing (in Los Angeles) would he be (ranked) top-15 in the nation? Would he be going to Duke? Just based on the perception of Sacramento basketball, I don’t think so. It’s just not going to get you the exposure or the respect.”
Why doesn’t this happen in girls’ basketball?
Sean Chambers has been heavily involved in Sacramento girls’ basketball for decades.
The Antelope coach has seen his program rise to one of the best in the region. Chambers coaches AAU basketball and works with some of the top players in the area.
According to him, there isn’t much movement on the girls’ side. When a top player decides to transfer, which is rare, it’s likely she will stay in the Sacramento area. The Bee’s Medium School Player of the Year, Mary Carter, transferred from Rocklin to Antelope last year.
The reason why transfers happen less often on the girls’ side? Motives and money. Boys are aiming for endorsements and the pros; girls want college scholarships, Chambers said.
Armstead, the trainer, pointed out there aren’t many prep schools or basketball academies for girls to attend. And, unlike the boys’ side, the girls’ basketball programs in Sacramento have built a name for themselves as powerhouses.
“Girls’ basketball in Sacramento has become a hotbed,” Chambers said. “The amount of (girls’ basketball) D1 scholarships that are leaving the girls’ side compared to the boys’ side is not even close. The exposure is happening on the girls’ side. … There’s not a lot of movement on the girls’ side from high school to high school.”
He added, “For the girls, it’s university or bust. They want to play and get a scholarship at a university. That’s their first main goal. Anything after that is a cherry on the top.”
This story was originally published September 6, 2022 at 5:00 AM.