Recruiting analysts pegged Moses Moody as the fourth best player on his high school basketball team last season.
Of course, that team happened to be a 25-0 Montverde Academy juggernaut widely lauded as one of the best high school basketball teams ever assembled.
And Moody is now a first-team All-SEC star leading Arkansas (22-6) into the NCAA Tournament as a freshman. His success, which includes SEC Newcomer of the Year and first-team all-conference honors as a 6-foot-6 shooting guard, says a lot about how loaded Montverde was last season and how polished the Lake County program has been in preparing a pipeline of players for major college rosters. As does the fact 17 former Eagles are on NCAA Tournament teams that play in the Big Dance this weekend.
Moody was a starter for both of his Montverde seasons but was overshadowed even as a senior by three national top-12 prospects: Cade Cunningham, the consensus high school player of the year; Scottie Barnes, also a high school All-American; and 6-10 Day’Ron Sharpe, who was rated by ESPN as the second best center in the country.
All three of those guys have also enjoyed immediate success at the next level.
Cunningham, the presumed No. 1 pick in the 2021 NBA Draft, is the Big 12 Player of the Year and the heartbeat for Oklahoma State (20-8), the No. 4 seed in the Midwest Region. He’s a 6-8 point guard who can do it all, evidenced by his per game averages of 20.2 points, 6.3 rebounds and 3.6 assists, and his ability to elevate a Cowboys program that was 12-20 two years ago.
OSU plays Liberty (23-5) at 6:25 p.m. Friday.
Cunningham was a first-team All-America selection.
Barnes, a 6-9 playmaking point guard for FSU (16-6), was a third-team All-ACC pick and the league’s Freshman of the Year and Sixth Man of the Year. He is averaging 11 points, 4.3 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 25 minutes going into a Saturday game pitting the No. 4 seed Seminoles against Southern Conference champ UNC Greensboro (21-8) at 12:45 p.m. in Indianapolis.
Sharpe started four games and is averaging 19.1 minutes, 9.7 points, 7.8 rebounds and 1.5 assists for North Carolina (18-10), an eight seed that plays No. 9 Wisconsin (17-12) at 7:10 p.m. Friday. He made the All-ACC Freshman Team.
The NBADraft.net mock draft has Cunningham going No. 1, Barnes No. 6 and Moody No. 7. The 247Sports Big Board has a similar projection for those three and has pushed Sharpe up to No. 23.
Moody, who returned to his home state to play for Arkansas, started all 26 games for the Razorbacks and is averaging 17.4 points, 5.9 rebounds and 1.8 assists. Those numbers jumped to 24.5 points, 6.3 boards and 3.3 assists in the past four games — including 28-point performances against South Carolina, Texas A&M and then LSU in Saturday’s SEC semifinal defeat.
A year ago, he was averaging 11.6 points in Montverde’s stacked lineup.
Arkansas, a third seed, plays Colgate (14-1) Friday at 12:45 p.m. in a South Region game.
Another member of Montverde’s 2020-21 team heading to the Big Dance is Zeb Jackson, a 6-5 freshman guard who has appeared in 14 games off the bench for Michigan (20-4), the top seed in the East Region.
More Montverde: Andrew Nembhard, a 2018 Montverde grad, was the West Coast Conference Sixth Man of the Year as a 6-5 junior guard for undefeated national No. 1 Gonzaga (26-0). He’s averaging 28 minutes, 9.2 points and 4.2 assists per game going into the Zags’ Saturday West Region opening-round game.
Nembhard started all 67 games in his freshman and sophomore seasons for Florida before transferring to Gonzaga.
Georgia Tech’s Mike Devoe, a 6-5 junior guard, was the ACC Tournament MVP after scoring 20 points in an 80-75 championship-game win against FSU. He is averaging 15.1 points, 4.3 rebounds and 3.3 assists going into a Friday 4 p.m. first-round game for the Yellow Jackets (17-8) vs. Loyola Chicago (24-4).
Balsa Koprivica, a 7-1 FSU sophomore, made the ACC All-Tournament team after averaging 14.0 points, 10.5 rebounds and 3.0 blocked shots in two games last week.
Former Montverde postgrad player MaCio Teague is the second-leading scorer (16.2 ppg) for Baylor (22-2), the top seed in the South Region and No. 2 overall seed behind Gonzaga. Teague also averaged 4.2 rebounds for the Bears, who will play Hartford (15-8) on Friday at 3:30 p.m.
Devante Carter, another Eagles postgrad alum who went the JUCO route, is a standout for MEAC Tournament champ Norfolk State (16-7), which plays Appalachian State (17-11) in a Thursday “First Four” game at 8:40 p.m. The 6-3 senior guard is averaging 15.5 points, 5.3 rebound and four assists.
Other Montverde products on NCAA Tournament rosters are:
Darnel Brodie, Drake 6-10, Jr. (starter)
Odri Dedollli, 6-4, Sr., Mount St. Mary’s
Omar Payne, Florida, 6-10, Soph. (started 8 games)
Micah Potter, Wisconsin, 6-10, Sr. (started 19 games)
Morris Udeze, Wichita State, 6-8, Jr. (starter)
Trevin Wade, Wichita State, 5-11, Jr.
Pavel Zakharov, Gonzaga, 7-0, Soph.
Two for the road: He won’t be dressing up for the Big Dance, but Montverde alum Sandro Mamukelashvili, a 6-11, 240-pound power forward for Seton Hall (14-13), was the Big East Conference MVP.
He averaged 17.5 points, 7.6 rebounds and 3.2 assists as a senior and had seven double-doubles. Mamukelashvili just missed another when he went for 32 points and nine rebounds in a win over St. John’s. He scored 30 against Penn State.
Mamukelashvili, a native of the Republic of Georgia, played high school basketball in Italy before coming to Montverde as a senior.
Marcus Carr’s Minnesota team also failed to advance, but through no fault of his own. The 6-2 redshirt junior point guard averaged 19.4 points, 4.9 assists and four rebounds for the Golden Gophers (14-15) and was first-team All-Big Ten. He played his final two seasons of high school basketball at Montverde.
This story was first published at OrlandoSentinel.com. Varsity Content Editor Buddy Collings can be reached by email at bcollings@orlandosentinel.com.
