Millennium, Holmes gear up for Open title
Goodyear Millennium, like almost every high school in Arizona, is in summer school. Inside the gym. Where stars are made. And championships are pursued.
It’s been a while since the boys’ basketball team won a state championship. But coach Ty Amundsen, always the optimist and never giving in to players leaving for prep academies, keeps building.
With 6-foot-7 sophomore-to-be Cameron Holmes continuing to develop, making it to the final cuts of Team USA’s U16 team that this week is playing in Mexico, and the recent move-in of guard Sabien Cain from Indiana, the Tigers are working hard this summer to get to the top.
They’ll be playing this weekend in Marc Beasley’s Monarch Sports Prime Time Invitational which is kind of an Open-like tourney field for June. Millennium won’t have Holmes for that, because he’ll be in St. Louis for the Nike Elite Top 100 Camp.
But it will be good for the Tigers to get Cain going, as he gets used to his new teammates, including 6-6 Kingston Tosi, who also is a big part of Millennium’s championship hopes.
Cain, who is a 6-3 senior, has an offer from Arizona State. He could be just the guy to get the Tigers over the hump and win their first state championship since 2008. Cain averaged 20.4 points and 4.8 rebounds, playing for University High in Carmel, Indiana, his junior season.
In 2018, ‘19 and last season, under Amundsen, the Tigers reached the 5A final, only to lose.
The Tigers fell short in last year’s 5A championship game, falling to Gilbert Campo Verde 61-48.
With this team, they feel it is a legitimate Open Division championship team in the making.
“It’s a good group,” Amundsen said. “We are real excited to have Sabien Cain join Millennium. A player of his caliber will add depth to an already deep team.
“We look forward to building chemistry together this summer as we work towards a big season ahead.”
There really is no time off in high school athletics. Basketball is pretty much year-round with spring ball committed to AAU club tournaments, June for high schools, July back to club, and fall leagues leading into the official Arizona
Interscholastic Association season the week of Thanksgiving.
Along with Millennium and Perry at Sunnyslope during this Friday and Saturday’s Prime Time at Brophy Prep (which also is playing) are Chandler Basha, Tucson Catalina Foothills, Scottsdale Desert Mountain, Scottsdale Notre Dame, Peoria, Prescott, Phoenix St. Mary’s and Chandler Valley Christian.
There are three brackets. The championship game for the gold bracket is Saturday at 4 p.m., at Brophy.
For Tosi, who took a break in the spring to heal up from tendonitis, this is a chance to get recharged and be the leader with Holmes away. Tosi recently picked up his first Division I offer from Northern Arizona.
“I think it’s mostly about development,” Holmes said of June basketball. “Making sure we’re all on the same page and the chemistry is the highest it’s been.”
Holmes put on a show last week in a Nike-sponsored tournament that Millennium hosted, dunking and scoring and dominating in Millennium’s 30-point rout of Phoenix Pinnacle, which featured 6-7 Braylon Johnson, the brother of NBA guard and former Phoenix Sun Cam Johnson.
Holmes, who only will be starting his sophomore year, has received the hype since he got to high school, picking up scholarship offers from high majors.
“I still have three years left of high school,” he said. “The key is don’t get too ahead of yourself.”
The goal is not just the 5A championship, but the Open state championship, getting through the 32-team bracket unscathed.
Of course, there are huge obstacles, namely 6-8 Koa Peat and defending Open state champion Gilbert Perry. And a Phoenix Sunnyslope team that also is loading up this summer and returns everybody from last year’s team that lost to Perry in the final.
Peat is in Mexico this week, playing for Team USA in the U16 FIBA tournament.
For Holmes to get to a final cut of the Team USA tryouts was a great learning experience.
“It helps to go up against the top players in the country,” he said.