Wes Watson raised the question. David Peavy answered it.
“I’ve been coming down here for 28 years,” Watson, McKinney’s head coach, said after a 69-49 loss to Duncanville in Saturday’s 6A state championship game. “I’ve seen a lot of great teams ... I’m not so sure that team we just played here is not the best I’ve ever seen down here.”
Watson’s message was relayed to Peavy, Duncanville’s head coach, who had this to say.
“I agree,” Peavy said. “That was our goal this year, right? We wanted to be considered one of the best teams to ever come through Texas.”
That’s lofty. Texas has seen some pretty good teams roll through the state tournament in San Antonio, including Chris Bosh’s Lincoln team in 2002 (which went 40-0 and won a state title) and TJ Ford’s Fort Bend Willowridge teams (which went 75-1 and won back-to-back state titles from 2000-01). Watson considered both when he vouched for Duncanville.
So what puts Duncanville, fresh off of a third-straight state title with a 35-1 record, in the conversation with those programs?
Here’s the case.
The resume
MaxPreps crowned Duncanville its No. 1 team in its year-end national rankings. ESPN currently ranks it second, and USA Today has it fifth. It’s the top public high school in all three polls.
Only three Texas high school teams have ever ended the season atop MaxPreps’ national rankings, which date back to 2005. Flower Mound Marcus finished No. 1 in 2011 and 2012 after two Marcus Smart-led state championships, and Houston Yates topped the list in 2010.
The 2002 Lincoln team topped USA Today’s national rankings at season’s end, as well as the Powerade Fab 50 — a continuation of the National Sports News Service rankings which started in 1952. Seven teams from Texas finished No. 1 in that poll from 1953 to 2010.
But the high school basketball landscape has changed dramatically since the days of Bosh (and even since the days of Smart). National prep powerhouses with rosters littered with players from each corner of the country have largely replaced homegrown public schools atop country-wide polls in the last decades.
One of those is Montverde Academy (Fla.), which was named MaxPreps’ No. 1 team five times in the last decade. Sierra Canyon (Calif.) — which competes in California’s interscholastic league, but often has top players from different states — finished No. 1 once in that span.
Duncanville beat both this regular season, as part of a tour that saw the Texas state champs handle some of the nation’s best programs.
Of Duncanville’s 35 wins, three came against teams teams currently ranked in ESPN’s national poll: No. 4 Montverde Academy, No. 16 Centennial (Calif.) and No. 17 Sierra Canyon. In preseason scrimmages (which do not count as part of its overall record), Duncanville beat ESPN’s top-ranked team Sunrise Christian (Kan.) and fifth-ranked Link Academy (Mo.).
Duncanville also beat four teams — Centennial, Carver (La.), Zachary (La.) and American Fork (Utah) — that won championships in their respective states, and had a win over Georgia power Wheeler by 22 points as well.
Its lone loss came to Richardson, currently ranked 12th in the country by both ESPN and MaxPreps, though much of that game was played without Duncanville five-star recruit Anthony Black, who sat for the first three-and-a-half quarters due to eligibility concerns after transferring from Coppell in the offseason.
The GEICO National Championship — a 10-team invitational that pits the country’s best high school teams against each other — would be Duncanville’s last and best opportunity to prove itself on a national scale, but the UIL bars its teams from participating in national postseason tournaments. Montverde beat Sunrise Christian in last year’s national final.
Duncanville’s regular-season record will now need to speak for itself.
“We went and played against everybody we could,” Peavy said. “We went around the country. We played Montverde, we beat — I don’t know why they don’t give us credit for it, because it was a scrimmage — but our guys played against Sunrise and beat them by 20, our guys played against Link and beat them. We did stumble against Richardson, and I feel like these guys did a great job of bouncing back and finishing off what we planned on.”
The team
Let’s start with the size. Against McKinney in Saturday’s state title game, Duncanville’s started five players all 6-7 or taller. It’s lineup measured in with an average height of just over 6-8.
That’s rare. Teams in the NBA don’t even do that. According to Hoop Social, the average height of the NBA’s tallest lineup at the beginning of the regular season was the Dallas Mavericks (80.4 inches). Duncanville (80.2 inches on averages) would have been tied for the second-tallest lineup in the NBA with the Indiana Pacers and the Memphis Grizzlies.
It’s not as though Duncanville is trotting out five centers. Senior Anthony Black (6-8) is a legitimate point guard with playmaking abilities. Senior Davion Sykes (6-7) is an athletic swingman, and junior Ashton Hardaway (6-7) is a knockdown long-distance shooter at the three position. Juniors Ron Holland (6-9) and Cameron Barnes (6-10) are the two lone traditional big men Duncanville starts.
Black, the nation’s top uncommitted recruit with offers from Gonzaga, Oklahoma State, Arkansas and others, was one of five Dallas-area natives named to the McDonald’s All American team. Holland, a five-star recruit, is the state’s top junior. Barnes, a four-star prospect, is ranked ninth in Texas for the class of 2023.
Way-too-early NBA mock drafts list Black and Holland as lottery picks in the 2023 and 2024 classes.
“They’re incredibly talented,” Watson said after Saturday’s title game. “They’re incredibly well coached.”
To even be considered as the best team in program history — let alone state history — is quite a feat. Duncanville has won six state championships, and could be at seven if the 2020 state tournament were not canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It became the first team to win three-straight titles at the state’s highest classification since Houston Wheatley did it from 1968-70.
In Saturday’s postgame press conference, Peavy was asked whether Duncanville’s 2019 state championship team (which included five-star recruit Jahmi’us Ramsey and four-star recruit Micah Peavy) or Duncanville’s 2022 state championship team would win in a game between the two.
Peavy picked the latter.
By 17 points.
“Size, consistency on defense,” Peavy said. “Different guys, a lot of different ways of scoring. This team has gotten better every year. Micah and Jahmi’us, that team was really good. Then we got a little bit better. Last year we got a little bit better, and this year we got a little bit better.”
The verdict
Most, if not all, comparisons between teams and players from different eras — who never have, and never will, play against each other — often end the same way: I guess we’ll never know.
This one ends that way, too.
Is this year’s Duncanville team the best Texas has ever seen? Maybe. The case is certainly strong, especially considering that Dallas-Fort Worth basketball may be the best its ever been right now.
Duncanville belongs in the conversation, at the very least, but no best-ever debates truly have a definitive answer.
Unless you ask Peavy, of course.
“I think we’re special,” Peavy said.
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