Impressions from watching Daquan Davis in the Under Armour Semifinals, Team Takeover takes the Peach Jam Crown

News and notes as the summer hoops circuit peaked over the past week…

1. New Providence commit Daquan Davis joined Team Thrill this July after spending the spring with defending 16U Peach Jam champions Team Takeover.

The headliner for the Baltimore-based Team Thrill is 6’9 big man Derik Queen, a top ten player in the class of 2024 who attends Montverde Academy. Queen is a traditional big man who plays with his back to the basket, and largely overpowered opponents over the past week, as Team Thrill reached the Under Armour Association (UAA) semifinals to take on Massachusetts-based Middlesex Magic.

Thrill was 5-0 in July heading into the semis, including a win over an Atlanta Xpress team featuring a top 75 class of ’24 prospect that PC is recruiting in Chase McCarty.

Davis scored 18 points in a win over Texas Impact in the game prior to taking on the Middlesex Magic in the semis.

The semifinal against the Magic was my third viewing of Davis on the UAA circuit in July, following relatively quiet games against New York-based Riverside Hawks and a blowout win over the Houston Defenders on the first day of action.

The Magic and Team Thrill matched up in late April, with Thrill taking a 64-61 victory behind 21 points and 14 rebounds (on 9-12 shooting) from Queen. This was prior to Davis playing with them, and top 100 point guard Chance Mallory added 19 points. Mallory is a 5’9 guard who has picked up offers from Virginia and Butler this summer.

The Middlesex Magic are a bit of an anomaly on the summer circuit. They weren’t affiliated with a sneaker company until last summer when they joined Under Armour, yet they have produced countless college players and a pair of NBA forwards who flew under-the-radar for much of their high school careers in Duncan Robinson and Pat Connaughton. If there’s an overlooked prospect on their current roster it is likely Ryan Mela, a 6’6 small forward in the class of 2024 who has been producing in a big way in UAA games for the past two years. High major offers have yet to follow. They have a promising point guard in Luka Toews (Boston College just became his first high major offer), while 6’9 Jacob Hogarth is a physical defender who plays for a prep power in South Kent. Daithi Quinn is a knockdown shooter in the class of 2025 that Ed Cooley’s staff was tracking while they were still at PC.

As for the future Friar, he and Team Thrill started out hot in this one, leading 23-13 behind eight points (on 2-2 shooting from the field, 4-4 at the free throw line) from Davis in the first quarter. Davis got to the rim with consistency in the opening quarter, and hit a tough floater. He was picking his spots a bit, as Thrill looked to pound away with Queen whenever given the opportunity to do so.

Davis went quiet over the next two-plus quarters. He missed the only two shots he put up in the second (a pair of early offense threes), but Queen was dominating offensively inside as Thrill headed to the locker room up, 37-30.

In the third, Mela went to work with his team trailing by 12. He scored 16 of his 22 points in the second half (shooting an efficient 9-11 from the floor), highlighted by a third quarter in which he scored on a pretty crossover, got to the rim for layups, knocked down a three, and scored a bucket and a foul off an offensive rebound.

As for Davis, he got to the free throw line with 1:26 to play in the third, making both shots as Middlesex had cut the Thrill lead to one at 49-48. That was his first shot of any kind in the quarter.

His team went into the fourth with a 52-48 lead, but momentum had shifted in favor of the Magic. After three quarters, Davis had 10 points on 2-4 shooting from the field (0-2 from 3) and 6-6 at the free throw line.

Middlesex took the lead on a Toews 3-pointer with just over six minutes to play, and then extended their advantage to 65-57 with three and a half minutes left. Davis scored his first field goal since the first quarter on a breakout off a turnover with 1:28 on the clock. He then hit a corner three as Thrill was scrambling to get back into the game, but it was too little, too late. Middlesex took home a 72-69 win in the semis, then went on to win the title on Sunday.

Davis finished with 15 points on 4-9 shooting from the field, 1-5 from three, and 6-6 at the free throw line. He is incredibly quick with the ball in his hands, but struggled in this one to make an impact after an efficient first quarter.

2. As for the Takeover team that Davis left this spring, they went undefeated in Peach Jam play this summer and took home the 17U crown on Sunday. Kim English immediately prioritized several players from the D.C.-based Nike club, a program that has reached the Peach Jam finals a record five times and won it on three occasions.

Team Takeover (TTO) took on Vegas Elite in the championship on Sunday, an opponent they narrowly defeated, 65-64, on July 4. Vegas Elite has an electric shooter in 2024 Ohio State commit John Mobley Jr., as well as the second rated sophomore in the country in wing Tyran Stokes, a top-50 2024 center in Aiden Sherell, and rugged forward Pharaoh Compton.

TTO pulled away in the fourth quarter of this one, taking a 76-61 win in the title game. Darren Harris, a sharpshooting Duke commit in the class of 2024, finished with a game-high 28 points and was outstanding from distance in making 5-7 from deep. Harris and Vegas’ Mobley Jr. put on a thrilling outside shooting clinic in the first half.

Syracuse-commit Donavan Freeman scored 13 points, while center Patrick Ngongba went for 11. Other notable names for Takeover in this one were URI commit Ben Hammond, who had nine points and nine assists, Isaiah Abraham (who will be announcing soon between UConn, Marquette, and Providence) with eight, and top 50 class of 2025 point guard Nyk Lewis, who impressed with his athleticism and finished with eight points of his own. TTO is so deep that top 125 class of 2024 big man Garrett Sundra and recent Georgetown commit Caleb Williams played a combined 11 minutes and were scoreless. Sundra, Nngonba, Abraham, Harris, and Hammond all attend Paul VI Catholic, the team that Davis and St. John’s knocked off in the WCAC tournament title game this past spring.

3. CBS Sports’ Gary Parrish wrote a feature on Massachusetts phenom AJ Dybantsa after the sophomore-to-be surprised everyone by leading the Peach Jam in scoring.

From the article:

“But what is surprising, and highly unusual, is that AJ Dybantsa just led Nike's Peach Jam in scoring despite only finishing his freshman year of high school a couple of months ago. Most players participating in the 17-and-under division here inside the Riverview Park Activities Center, which sits a mere seven miles away and across the Savannah River from Augusta National Golf Club, are about to be seniors. Dybantsa, on the other hand, still has three more years of high school -- provided, of course, that he declines the opportunity to someday reclassify to the Class of 2025, which is far from a given considering his talent and the fact that he's currently widely viewed as the No. 1 prospect in the Class of 2026.

"What he's doing is very unique" said Todd Quarles, who coaches Dybantsa with Expressions Elite, an EYBL program based in Boston. "He's dominated at the 17-youth level as a freshman, and he's dominated as a three-level scorer. ... He's a special basketball player and a special person -- and he could be the next great one that is generational. You had [Michael] Jordan. You had LeBron [James] and Steph Curry and KD [Kevin Durant]. He could be in that same regard. He has the style, the flair, the ability and the charisma.”