D4 standouts out to hot starts in basketball season
Auburn Hills Oakland Christian’s Jack Currie and Southfield Christian’s Mikey Lividini and Uchenna Amene are smallschool hoopsters on the rise.
Currie is a junior and plays out of the frontcourt. He sheeted 17 points and 7 rebounds in Oakland Christian’s’ 51-30 takedown of Waterford Our Lady of the Lakes in the Lancers’ season opener.
His older brother, Taylor, was an All-State center on Clarkston’s back-to-back Class A state championship clubs and after stints at Wisconsin and Akron is killing it at the Division II level for Harding University (in Arkansas) this year.
“Jack is developing (rapidly),” Oakland Christian head coach Dennis Hopkins said. “We’re excited to watch him continue to grow as a player and a young man.”
Lividini and Amene are hot shots on the perimeter for Southfield Christian and both started the 2021-2022 campaign in style with flashy stat lines in last week’s pair of wins.
Lividini fired in 26 points in the Eagles’ 89-45 trouncing of Detroit University Prep on Tuesday and then Amene got in on the high-scoring action with 24 points in a 65-42 victory over Grosse Pointe Woods University Liggett Friday and followed it up with 27 points in a win over Birmingham Roeper on Monday.
Amene is a rangy sophomore just scratching the surface on his potential and Lividini is a versatile and gritty junior who has a penchant for going on scoring binges in a blink of an eye. They both picked up right where they left off in the COVID-19 shortened 2020-2021 season when they finished strong and came into their own.
“Those guys are getting better every day, gaining confidence and making the kind of strides that lift their team and teammates to a whole other level of play,” Southfield Christian head coach Clennie Brundidge said.
The cannon is loose
North Farmington junior transfer Ryan Hurst has adapted quite nicely to the Raiders’ system and appears to be the early frontrunner for the Oakland County scoring title.
Hurst scored 29 and 34 points, respectively, in wins against East Lansing and Detroit Edison in the first two games of the season. The 6-2, broad-shouldered Hurst has always been a naturally-gifted offensive commodity dating back to his first two years of high school ball at West Bloomfield.
The hype is real
Orchard Lake St. Mary’s
highly-touted freshman phenom Trey McKenney rattled off 17 and 21 points, respectively, in the first two games of what should be a celebrated prep career in the Eaglets nest. St. Mary’s is 2-0.
McKenney, a 6-foot-4 wing guard, is arguably the No. 1 player in the nation in the Class of 2025, and already owns more than a half-dozen Division I scholarship offers. Illinois was the most recent school to put a bid on the table and Michigan head coach Juwan Howard was on hand to watch McKenney Sunday in the Eaglets thrashing of Grosse Pointe South in a showcase slate at Calihan Hall.
Tweet of the Week
“Stay the course, run your race,” former Clarkston all-state point guard and the state’s 2018 Mr. Basketball Foster Loyer commenting on his torrid start in his new Davidson digs after his three years at Michigan State.