When Kevin Boyle’s collection of Division 1 prospects, future McDonald’s All-Americans and likely NBA draft picks was done dunking all over Gill St. Bernard’s on Friday night at RWJBarnabas Health Arena in Toms River, the two coaches wore vastly different expressions.
On one side, Boyle, the 56-year-old Clark native who brought his No. 1-ranked Montverde (Fla.) Academy team to play in the Metro Classic, flashed a wry smile along with his sharp black suit and crisp white shirt.
On the other bench, Gill coach Mergin Sina sat slumped over, his face awash in calm acceptance after taking a 75-40 beatdown in front of several thousand curious onlookers.
“We played a team that would beat half of the Division 1 teams in college right now,” Sina told NJ Advance Media. “This might be Kevin’s best team he’s had since he’s been at Montverde.”
And that’s saying something considering Boyle has won four mythical high school national championships, five New Jersey Tournament of Champions crowns and has been named National Coach of the Year five times.
The Gill game was just the latest rout for an unbeaten Montverde team that is littered with stars, including Cade Cunningham, the projected No. 1 pick in the 2021 NBA Draft; Scottie Barnes, another projected first-round pick in ‘21; and Newark native Dariq Whitehead, who could jump straight from the preps to the pros in 2022 if the NBA’s one-and-done rules goes away.
“This team is very unselfish,” said the 6-foot-8 Barnes, who has signed with Florida State. “We have a lot of people who want to share the ball. We don’t really care about our stats a lot, so it helps the team a lot because we move the ball and most of the time our assists and our field goals match up.”
Boyle’s team is the consensus favorite to win the GEICO High School Nationals in April in New York, which would mark his fifth such title at Montverde since 2013.
This team is so deep and talented, they could have three McDonald’s All-Americans when the team is named later this month. The state of New Jersey had three boys McDonald’s All-Americans last season. Montverde is so loaded, they have a player signed with Michigan coming off the bench.
“I don’t think there’s ever been a high school team with a collection of eight players in the Top 50 of their respective classes ever,” said Pryia Roy, a Rahway native who has been friendly with Boyle for years and developed the Metro Classic as a way to showcase Boyle’s teams on the coach’s home turf. (The Metro Classic pays for Montverde’s travel expenses to the event.)
“That needs to be appreciated and accepted and embraced because it’s not going to happen again,” Roy added of the depth of Boyle’s team. “It’s like Halley’s Comet, enjoy it.”
Asked about the idea that his current team could beat its share of college teams, Boyle said the best way to answer the question is to imagine if all five of his starters landed at the same college, say, Kentucky.
His four senior starters are signed with North Carolina, Oklahoma State, Arkansas and Florida State. One starter is a sophomore and has yet to pick a school.
“We have a very good team and a lot of people have been saying this is one of the best high school teams they ever seen but we need to stay humble, work extremely hard and get better,” Boyle said. “That should be a question for others to answer if we finished No. 1.
“A number of people ask, can they compete with major college teams? That’s another question for others to answer but if the starters went to one major college together they would be one of the top recruiting classes, if not the top, in the nation and you would assume that a top-3 recruiting class of five players would start in the top 10 nationally.”
WEARING THE BLACK HAT IN NEW JERSEY
The beatdown of Gill St. Bernard’s, ranked No. 10 in the state by NJ.com, was the latest victory by Boyle’s team over a New Jersey opponent.
A year ago, the Eagles handled both Ranney and Roselle Catholic at this event, with the game against the Lions marred by a brawl in the final two minutes.
In Boyle’s first-ever matchup against his former school on Dec. 30 at the John Wall Holiday Invitational in North Carolina, the Eagles destroyed The Patrick School, 77-32, with Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski on hand for Celtics star Jonathan Kuminga.
The Patrick School was ranked No. 1 by NJ.com and No. 3 by USA Today at the time, and Boyle seemed to relish the blowout.
“I don’t know if that’s ever happened in a high-level national high school game,” Boyle told reporters in North Carolina. “I don’t know if it’s ever happened that someone’s been beat by 40 and the clock’s running. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find that when you have two top-five teams in the country.”
During his 24 years patrolling the sidelines at St. Patrick, Boyle was often painted as wearing the black hat while legendary St. Anthony’s coach Bob Hurley was perceived to wear the white one.
During the 2009-10 season, Kyrie Irving’s senior season at the Elizabeth school, the NJSIAA secretly filmed illegal preseason practices at St. Patrick while it was looking for alleged recruiting violations. No violations were uncovered. The NJSIAA then suspended the Celtics from the state tournament. Boyle’s team had won three of the previous four Tournament of Champions titles, with Irving leading the way in 2009. (Now with the Nets, Irving still financially supports The Patrick School and most recently visited the school and the team on Thursday.)
During a hearing before the Controveries Committee in January 2010, Boyle admitted he violated out-of-season coaching rules.
"I misinterpreted the rule and didn’t check on it,” he said according to transcripts obtained by The Star-Ledger. “I was definitely wrong.
On March 9, 2011, in his final game in New Jersey. Boyle was coaching a St. Patrick team that was undefeated and ranked No. 1 in the nation. Hurley’s Friars were No. 2 when they met in the North Non-Public B State final at the RAC. The game — which was an unofficial national championship game featuring No. 1 and No. 2 — drew a capacity crowd of 8,057, as well as Kentucky coach John Calipari and then-Rutgers coach Mike Rice.
Thanks to a block in the final seconds by Kyle Anderson of the Friars on Kentucky commit Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, the Friars won the game, 62-45, to spoil St. Patrick’s perfect season. Their year was ultimately documented in the HBO film, “Prayer For a Perfect Season.”
“I can’t describe what just happened,” Hurley, who hasn’t coached since St. Anthony’s closed in 2017, told a room full of reporters that night at the RAC. “We beat a great high school team. … The best team tonight won the game. And we’re glad it was us.”
“They beat us. ... so I think they have to clearly get the stamp as No. 1 in the country, providing they finish,” Boyle said then.
COACHING A SLEW OF TOP-3 PICKS
The following year Boyle surprised many in basketball circles when he and his family left the Elizabeth school for a six-figure salary (and a school-provided house) at leafy Montverde near Orlando.
Since then he’s turned it into a perennial contender for the No. 1 team in high school basketball by attracting the top talent not only from around the nation but the globe as well.
His 2017-18 team featured Canadian star R.J. Barrett and went 35-0 en route to the GEICO High School National Championship. After one year at Duke, Barrett became the No. 3 pick of the Knicks.
Boyle also coached current Seton Hall forward Sandro Mamukelashvili, a native of the Republic of Georgia who was drawn to Montverde because it had previously featured Australian star Ben Simmons, now with the 76ers, and D’Angelo Russell, now on the Warriors.
“I saw how good Montverde was,” Mamukelashvili said of his decision to enroll at Montverde in 2016 after playing in Italy. “I saw Ben Simmons, D’Angelo, all the players. When I asked about coach Boyle, everybody was telling me how good he was. It was kind of like a no-brainer. When I had the chance to go there, I just went there.”
All told, Boyle has coached six top-3 NBA Draft picks, including two No. 1s in Simmons and Irving, two No. 2s in Kidd-Gilchrist and Russell and two No. 3’s in Barrett and Joel Embiid, now with the 76ers.
Cunningham, the team’s current star and an Oklahoma State commit, is the projected No. 1 pick in 2021. If that comes to fruition, Boyle will have coached seven top-3 picks since 2011.
For all of his accomplishments, Boyle should be in position to join Hurley among a small group of high school coaches in the Naismith Hall of Fame. Whether the fact that he split his coaching tenure at two different schools — unlike Hurley — will hurt him remains unclear, but his résumé speaks for itself.
Boyle isn’t just rolling the balls out, either.
His players all say Boyle drives them harder than any other coach and makes them better with his non-stop staccato chatter about tactics and technique.
“Kevin, he pushed me a lot,” said Barnes, who transferred in this season from another Florida high school powerhouse. “Every practice, we always in the weight room and it’s just a non-stop grind.”
After losing in the semifinals of the GEICO Nationals last year to IMG Academy, Cunningham said this year will be considered a failure if Montverde doesn’t win its fifth GEICO title during Boyle’s tenure.
“We talk about that all the time,” he said.
A FUTURE AS A COLLEGE COACH?
Many have wondered over the years if Boyle would ever leave Montverde to coach in the college ranks.
He was briefly linked to the Rutgers opening before Steve Pikiell was hired in 2016.
"I think it's hard to do that [make that jump from high school]," Rutgers AD Pat Hobbs said the day Pikiell was introduced. "Kevin Boyle's name was obviously out there. I have tremendous respect for Kevin Boyle and the job he did both here in New Jersey and now at Montverde. I just think it's a big step.
“That doesn't mean a high school coach can't succeed, they certainly can. We've got lots of examples of that, but I thought for this job right now at this moment of challenge we needed somebody who had built a college program and who had experience recruiting in New Jersey recruiting players to a college program."
While Pikiell now has Rutgers in the mix for its first NCAA Tournament bid since 1991, Boyle insists he’s happy where he is.
“I’m really happy at Montverde Academy and at this point in my life,” Boyle said, “it would take a really unusual circumstance for me not to be at Montverde Academy.”
Adam Zagoria is a freelance reporter who covers Seton Hall and NJ college basketball for NJ Advance Media.