by James Quinn MDVarsity.com Magazine Staff Mike Glick's first season as the head coach at Gwynn Park High School was made a lot easier by the presence, talent and leadership of 6-2.5 junior point guard Sean Thomas. The Yellow Jackets were looking at a serious rebuilding job in 2006-2007 after veteran Coach Steve Mathews left in the spring of 2006. Gwynn Park lost 11 of 14 players from their 2005-2006 squad and the three returning players had limited experience. (Prior to Mathews, legendary D.C. basketball figure George Leftwich had success at Gwynn Park). But Gwynn Park has a long, distinguished history as a public school hoops power in Prince George's County and Mike Glick, who had previously built Catholic School powers at Pallotti High School and Archbishop Spalding, quickly built a competitive team from the young talent at his disposal at Gwynn Park. The Yellow Jackets were a very respectable 13-10 this year even though they had a very young team with little proven size. One of the key reasons for Gwynn Park's success this year was Sean Thomas. "Sean had a terrific year for us," Coach Glick told MdVarsity.com. "He was our leading scorer at 13.7 points a game. He led us with 3.5 assists per game and his assist-to-turnover rate was 2.5 to 1, which is really good. Sean is a point guard for us, but I think he'll 'combo' in college. He is strong and skilled enough to play either guard position. He is already about 185 pounds and he is still just 16 years old. Sean isn't a great long range shooter, he only attempted 2 three pointers this season, but he is a good mid-range shooter and he can really get to the rim. Sean can really create off the dribble and is strong enough to take the bump. He is a tough kid, he led us in free throw attempts this year. Even though he is not a great shooter, he did hit 48 pct. of his field goal attempts as a junior." Coach Glick pointed out that Thomas, "… played better as the year went along. We won our last five games and Sean had a lot to do with that. His scoring went down a little at the end of the year, but he was running the team and doing a lot of things to lead the team, make us better and win some games. He had a really good year for us." Coach Glick said that Thomas is already getting recruiting interest "…from about 10 Division One colleges. Holy Cross, Navy, George Mason, Akron, Loyola…we have a few colleges coming in to look at him in 'open gyms' this week. Sean is a great kid, a real good teammate, a kid who can be a real leader. He is a good student, he has a 3.3 GPA and a good, qualifying SAT score already. Even though Sean has a good SAT score already, he is going to take it again so that he can keep some of these real 'high end' academic colleges on him. I really like Sean, I think he is a heckuva player. We could be pretty darn good next year and he'll be a big key for us." Thomas will be playing AAU ball with the Triple Threat Blue 17 & Under AAU squad this off-season.

By Tim Brennan Staff Writer SALISBURY -- In six days the basketball will be tossed in the air at the Wicomico Youth and Civic Center, and it will be in near constant motion for four days of action at the 2006 Lions Club Holiday Classic. When things finally come to rest, six championship will be crowned, with the last one being either Gwynn Park, Our Lady of Good Counsel, Archbishop Spalding or Thomas Jefferson. The four schools will be playing in the National Cup, possibly the premiere bracket of the event. ADVERTISEMENT The championship will be staged next Saturday, tipping off at 9 p.m. "We look forward to playing good competition because it only makes us better," Good Councel coach Mike Hibbs said. "It lets us know what we need to do to get better and offers another challenge for us to get ready for our league." Three of the schools will come from across the bridge in Maryland, while Thomas Jefferson will be making the trip from Brooklyn, N.Y. A team that has been steeped in tradition, the Orange Wave has been down in recent years, and is looking to get back on top, led by senior center Kristin Joyner. "Jefferson was always competitive through the years, and they fell into the cellar," Thomas Jefferson third-year coach Lawrence Pollard said. "(Our players) don't really know the history, but what they do know now is that we've got a lot of young guys and they want to kind of be the ones to re-establish the program as one of the elite teams in the city and I think we're well on our way to doing that." Thomas Jefferson will face Gwynn Park in the first round, and should the teams come together in either the championship or consolation game, a Gwynn Park-Archbishop Spalding meeting would be a reunion. Gwynn Park coach Mike Glick is in his first season leading the Yellow Jackets after coaching Spalding for seven seasons. "I kind of look at taking it one game at a time," Glick said. "It would be a little special to play Spalding because I have a really good report and relationship with all of my players. It would be great to play against them." Glick is leading a program that has had a great deal of recent success as Gwynn Park has advanced to four 3A state championship games in the last eight seasons. The teams in the National Cup bracket look to change up their styles of play, able to run or play a half-court set and with a number of young playersthey are still trying to come together as a team. "At times we do get a little erratic, because we do have a freshman point guard who's starting for us," Hibbs said. "We have some inexperience in the backcourt and that's caused some trouble at the end of games." On of the young players making his impact felt early is a 6-foot-5 Thomas Jefferson freshman Joel Wright. He is averaging 15 points and 15 rebounds through his team's first six games and may be the difference in the National Cup.

Gwynn Park Yellow Jackets A new era dawns in Brandywine as long-time coach Steve Matthews stepped down last spring. In his place, Gwynn Park in May hired a proven winner in Glick, a former coach at Archbishop Spalding and St. Vincent Pallotti. Glick will lead a Yellow Jackets’ boys program that has won more state titles (10) and has played in more state finals (16) than any other program in state history. Glick led Pallotti to the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference Division II championship in the mid 1990s and led Spalding to several Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference titles. Glick brings 13 years of experience and 272 career victories to a program that suffered four losses in the state title game during Matthews’ tenure. “Our objective is very simple and that is to keep getting better and playing our best basketball,“ Glick said. “I’m a defensive-minded coach and we want to be a very good defensive team.“ Gwynn Park will be undersized, with its tallest player standing 6-foot-4, but the Yellow Jackets seek to keep the tempo up by pushing the ball on offense and using its defense to generate points. Junior guards Sean Thomas and Harold Washington will lead the Yellow Jackets’ attack.

Gwynn Park boys begin from scratch Yellow Jackets’ players, new coaching staff have high expectations Thursday, June 15, 2006 by Terron Hampton Looking at the Gwynn Park High boys’ basketball team’s bench during its Falconer’s Summer League game last Thursday, nothing appeared the same. Aside from three coaches on the sidelines, as the Yellow Jackets had on the sidelines in years past, no noticeable vestiges lingered from the time that Steve Matthews spent with the program. The starting five that led the Yellow Jackets to the 2004 state final has all graduated and a new coach, Mike Glick, has taken over the program But the Gwynn Park boys’ program has little problem with starting anew. ‘‘This is a whole new regime here now,” said summer league coach Jarrett Thompson after a lengthy post-game talk with the team outside of Riverdale Baptist last week, after the Yellow Jackets were blown out by Largo. ‘‘We want to weed out all of the bad rumors and garbage that surrounded this team in the past.” Thompson failed to elaborate on the past or things the new coaching staff did not like. But a few changes are in store in the coming year for the most successful public boys’ basketball program in state history. First, the Yellow Jackets will have no starters from 2005-06 returning this season. The team’s new leaders go by the names of Sean Thomas, Octavius Hinnant and Harold Washington. Thomas explained what basic training under Glick — one of the most successful coaches in the state over the past decade — has been like. ‘‘The transition, I can’t describe it,” Thomas said, as he struggled for words to explain the new focus at Gwynn Park. ‘‘Just every day, we’re working hard and playing and practicing like we want to win next year.” The Yellow Jackets are accustomed to winning, having gone to five state Final Fours during Matthews’ 11 seasons with the team. But the Yellow Jackets have gained a reputation in recent years for coming up short when the pressure is on. Leading in the final seconds of the 2004 state championship game, the team allowed its opponent to convert a three-point play and win by one point. The Yellow Jackets allowed an eight-point lead to evaporate in the final minutes of the 2005 3A East Region final and lost to Crossland on a buzzer-beater. Washington talked about the intangibles needed for the Yellow Jackets to get over the hump and add to its state-best 11 boys’ basketball championships. ‘‘In order to get better, we have to get stronger mentally,” Washington said in the wake of several years where the Yellow Jackets players and coaches bickered often. ‘‘We’re not a big team, so we have to force teams to play to our size. We’re far along right now from where we began a short while ago.” Virtually every player Glick has coached over the past decade with the Pallotti and Spalding boys’ basketball teams has gone on to play in college. Hinnant said he hopes to play four years with a major NCAA program, as his brother Louis has done the past four years with Atlantic Coast Conference power Boston College. ‘‘Coach Glick is a great coach. All he and every other coach we have now is trying to do is get us into college,” said Hinnant, nicknamed ‘‘Lucky” by his coaches and teammates. ‘‘We have a lot of players on this team now that could shock the county next year.” Said Thompson, ‘‘They’ve never seen anything like this. Everything we do with them now, in terms of drills and things like that, is new. Before the [summer] season, all of the coaches sat down with all of the players and their parents on an individual basis and had a chance to get to know them. The first thing we stress is getting them into college. The second thing we stress is that not everyone goes to Duke or UConn. We just tell them to keep working hard and we’re putting them in positions to win.” E-mail Terron Hampton at thampton@gazette.net.

Today we look at Connecticut forward Rudy Gay. Gay burst onto the college basketball scene as a true freshman, earning Big East co-Rookie of the Year honors. As a sophomore he averaged 15.2 ppg and 6.4 rpg on a talented UConn team. His upside has him projected as a high lottery pick. Rudy Gay Position: Shooting Guard College: Connecticut Age: 19 Vitals: 6-foot-9, 220 pounds High school: Severn (MD) Archbishop Spalding Coach:Mike Glick Interview of Rudy Gay's head coach Mike Glick: When was the first time you remember thinking Rudy eventually could play in the NBA? I had a chance to meet Rudy at the end of his seventh grade year. We recruited him to come to Spalding as an eighth-grader. He decided to go the public school. He came to Spalding before his junior year. I saw it in him. I've coached a lot of guys. I told him that if he was willing to work on his game, on his grades and in the weight room, he would have been a potential pick out of Spalding. I don't know if he saw it, but I did. He did a 180 and changed around his academics and changed around his body. He started lifting weights. He got better and better. He had freakish athleticism. He had the wingspan of someone 7 feet 1. He had tremendous first step and coordination. He had an innate ability to square himself in his jumper. If you were to create the prototype wing in the NBA, it would be in Rudy's body. He's a phenomenal human being. He has not changed since I met him. What's your fondest game memory of him? His senior year we played St. Francis. They were No. 1 and we were No. 2. I told Rudy they were going to play box-and-one the whole game. He scored 39 against the box-and-one. There was also his last game. We played in the Alhambra Catholic Invitational Tournament. We're playing the last game of his senior year. It was the third-place consolation game against DeMatha. Down nine with three minutes left, I called my last timeout. Rudy said he wasn't going to go out a loser, and he scored the last 11 points of the game and we won by 2. His character showed through. When's the last time you spoke to him? A week ago maybe. We talk about once a month or a month and half. I had a chance to see him at the Final Four for the Naismith. What's your draft prediction for him? It looks like most people have him between three and seven. Wherever he goes, his best days are ahead of him. Whatever NBA team gets him, they will get a guy that will work hard every day and never get into trouble.