College BB '15 - First Look

From the moment in late November 2010 that I saw them pictured as part of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's preview of the 2010-11 Milwaukee area high school basketball season, I have been looking forward to the day I would be writing about Elgin Cook and Jameel McKay in this blog. Little did I expect that day wouldn't come until more than 4 years later. Although the preview was the first I had ever heard of McKay, I was a little bit familiar with Cook from the previous season, when he was named City Conference player of the year while playing for Hamilton HS. Led by the 6-foot-6 Cook (top two photos on right from March 2010) and 6-8 Darnell Harris (lower left photo on right from the same game), both juniors, Hamilton was pretty much an all-star team in 2009-10, winning the conference championship and making a rare (for Hamilton) appearance in the state tournament. But neither of them was around a year later, when Hamilton made a repeat trip to the tournament; and neither they nor McKay, the 6-7 forward from Pulaski HS (lower right photo from a February 2011 game) would begin their college careers at Division 1 schools in the fall of 2011, as they (and I) had hoped.