Why Cooper Flagg should go to Maine

The No. 1 men's basketball recruit in the 2024 class could stun the college basketball world by turning around the program at his home state's flagship university

Even if you don’t have an interest in the intricacies of college basketball recruiting, there’s at least a chance you’ve heard of Cooper Flagg.

The 6-foot-8 forward from Newport, Maine isn’t quite a generational prospect because there’s by definition only one of those per generation, but he’s something not terribly far from it.

Flagg is the consensus No. 1 player in the 2024 men’s college basketball recruiting rankings, with the four major recruiting outlets – 247 Sports, Rivals, ESPN and On3 – all slotting him in their top spot. Players like him only enter the college game every so often and when they do, they have the potential to have a profound impact on the sport and whatever program is fortunate enough to land their services.

As you might expect, that race is a competitive one right now. Duke and UConn, the two schools Flagg has visited the past two months, are generally regarded as the favorites, with recent hints indicating that the Blue Devils will be the ultimate victor in this quest.

In that way, Flagg’s recruitment will be a predictable one. The ballyhooed, top-ranked prospect will end up at the historical power and current recruiting juggernaut that, even more than Kentucky, has emerged as the go-to pit stop for one-and-done players. And, yes, it’ll feel even more fitting given that Flagg is white and Duke is, well, Duke.

In his 16-year-old hands, though, Flagg has the potential to do something much more unconventional and undeniably more memorable, a move that would stun the college basketball establishment while fortifying himself as a trailblazer and a transcendent, trail-blazing figure in the history of the sport.

Flagg should ignore the army of prestigious suitors courting him, stay home and go to the University of Maine.

Before we get into that, just how good is this guy?

Extremely good. The No. 1 recruit in any class is going to draw a significant amount of attention and accolades, but even when measured against those top-rated prospects, Flagg stands out.

At Nokomis Regional High School, he became the first-ever freshman to win Gatorade player of the year honors in Maine after averaging 20.5 points, 10 rebounds, 6.2 assists, 3.7 steals and 3.7 blocks per game. For good measure, he also led his team to a 21-1 record and a Class A state championship, scoring 22 points and pulling down 16 rebounds in a 43-27 title game victory in which he accounted for more than half of his team’s scoring output.

Word of him quickly spread beyond his small (literal) corner of the country. Flagg received his first scholarship offer – from Bryant University in Rhode Island – when he was in eighth grade. After his decorated freshman season, he transferred from Nokomis to Montverde Academy in Florida, a private school powerhouse that plays a national schedule and has produced, among others, Joel Embiid, RJ Barrett, Cade Cunningham, Ben Simmons and D’Angelo Russell the past decade.

Last year, as a 15 year old, he competed for the U.S. U-17 team in the FIBA Under-17 Basketball World Cup and made the all-tournament team after averaging 9.3 points, 10 rebounds, 2.9 blocked shots, and 2.4 steals for the gold-medal winner. In the championship victory against Spain, he had 10 points, 17 rebounds, eight steals and four blocked shots. Later that year, he became the youngest winner ever of the USA Basketball male athlete of the year award.

This past summer, he was MVP of the National Basketball Players Association Top 100 Camp in Orlando and turned in one of the best showings in the history of the Nike EYBL Peach Jam, averaging 25.4 points, 13 rebounds, 5.7 assists and 6.9 blocks while propelling his Maine United AAU team, which doesn’t feature anyone else widely considered to be a Division I prospect, to the tournament’s championship game.

He’s a 6-foot-8 forward who has been described as having point guard-like skills while influencing the game defensively both on the perimeter and down low. Mike DeCourcy, the esteemed longtime basketball writer for The Sporting News, noted Tuesday that he believes Flagg is the best American prospect since Anthony Davis, who was the national player of the year and led Kentucky to its first national championship in 14 years in his lone season at the school.

He’s clearly good at basketball. But is Maine?

No. In fact, it’s quite bad.

Maine is one of 35 eligible Division I schools that has never made the NCAA Tournament. It hasn’t gotten particularly close, either. It has made the America East Conference championship game four times, but hasn’t done so since 2004 and only one of those title-game defeats came by single digits. In the past decade, the Black Bears’ hopes have deteriorated even more. Over the past 10 seasons, they’ve gone 68-219 and last season’s 13-17 mark snapped a nine-year skid in which they failed to win at least 10 games.

Because of that, interest in the team isn’t particularly high. Last season, Maine averaged just 595 fans per game while splitting time between The Pit in Memorial Gymnasium, a 3,100-seat bandbox of a gym on campus, and Cross Insurance Arena, a recently renovated 6,200-seat venue 12 miles from campus in Bangor.

The reasons for those shortcomings aren’t particularly hard to identify.

For one, there isn’t much in-state talent, both now and historically. Only two players from Maine have ever played in the NBA and both of them – Jeff Turner and Duncan Robinson – grew up elsewhere (the former in Florida, the latter in New Hampshire). Just two players from the University of Maine have ever been drafted, one of whom, Rick Carlisle, transferred from the school after two seasons and finished his college career at Virginia. Only two players on the Black Bears’ current roster are from Maine, which is notable considering it’s the only Division I program in the state.

The campus’ location in Orono is relatively remote, placing it closer to Canada than Portland, the state’s largest city (and a jewel of a place, if you’ve never been). It’s inland, too, about 60 miles from the coast of the Atlantic Ocean.

The men’s basketball program’s relative failings have come with, and perhaps caused, a meager financial investment into it. According to the most recent data available from the U.S. Department of Education, Maine spent $1.64 million on men’s basketball, ranking it seventh in the nine-team America East. By contrast, Duke and UConn, Flagg’s frontrunners, spent $28.02 million and $24.06 million, respectively.

Those larger woes aren’t limited to men’s basketball. Even the school’s storied men’s hockey program has languished in recent years, going 17-38-8 the past three seasons. The Black Bears, who won national championships in 1993 and 1999, haven’t made the NCAA Tournament since 2012.

Then why should he go there?

From that despair comes a unique opportunity.

Before ever playing a college game, much less a professional one, Flagg is probably already the best basketball player Maine has ever produced. The pull for him to stay home is a pretty obvious one. He’s a legend in the state for what he has done at Nokomis and elsewhere, but could you imagine how much that hype and hagiography would amplify if it weren’t limited to tales about his exploits as a high school freshman?

Choosing the Black Bears at all would add to that lure, as he would have chosen a path so many others would be too scared or haughty to pursue. Once he’d lace up, he’d have the chance to lead Maine to its first NCAA Tournament while making a program that’s something more forgettable than an afterthought into a national story.

It’s a feasible road, especially because getting Flagg would almost certainly mean it wouldn’t just be him coming (more on that later). The America East is navigable. Through its strong player development, savvy coaching hires and willingness to overlook sexual assault, Vermont is the league’s perennial NCAA Tournament representative, but the Catamounts aren’t an insurmountable force, especially when countered with such an uncommon talent for that conference.

After making his home state university relevant in a way it never has been, he would head off to the NBA, where he’d be the presumptive No. 1 pick in the 2025 draft, and forever be a conquering hero in the place where he was born and raised.

The Black Bears, for all their missteps, actually have some newfound hope that could make this at least somewhat enticing. Coach Chris Markwood led them to a seven-win improvement in 2022-23 and their best record in 12 years, all of which came in his first season at the school after working for 16 years as an assistant coach exclusively in New England. Markwood is a Maine graduate who, like Flagg, is a native of the state. His journey as a player is potentially instructive, too, as he played for two seasons at Notre Dame before transferring back home to play for the Black Bears.

That sounds good, but isn’t that pretty risky, though?

Yes and no.

There are very real and unavoidable potential drawbacks for Flagg. As callous as it feels and is to say, he’s a commodity at this point in his life, one that needs to be treated with care and some level of caution. At Maine, he wouldn’t have access to the same kinds of facilities, amenities and (likely) coaching that he could get at the bigger, more well-resourced programs chasing after him. The level of competition in the America East also isn’t what it would be in, say, the ACC or Big East.

It is worth asking, though, how much any of that really matters.

There’s a risk of injury, of course, but that exists whether he’s in Orono, Maine or Durham, N.C. It’s more a matter of luck than your immediate surroundings.

While some might claim such an unorthodox move would hurt his NBA prospects, there’s precious little evidence over the past 10-15 years that’s the case.

Injuries limited Kyrie Irving to 11 games in his lone season at Duke and he was still the No. 1 overall pick in the 2011 NBA Draft. Ben Simmons moped his way through five months on an LSU team that didn’t even make the NIT and was demonstrably worse than it was the season before his arrival and yet he, too, was the first pick. Debilitating back issues kept Michael Porter Jr. out of all but three of Missouri’s 2017-18 games and he was still a lottery selection – and, now, a starter on the reigning NBA champions. Two of the top five picks in the most recent draft came from Overtime Elite, a venture that’s more an internet content farm than a bastion for basketball development.

Since 2011, which is sadly as far back as 247’s player rankings go, three top-10 recruits have committed to a school that wasn’t in a Power Five conference, the Big East, American Athletic Conference and Mountain West or that wasn’t Gonzaga. All three are currently in the NBA. They didn’t achieve college glory, sure, but they made it to their desired destination.

In some cases, talent is so laughably obvious and potential is so tantalizingly high that it doesn’t frankly matter what you’ve done the previous eight months. With that being the case, why not become a singular figure in college basketball history?

OK, so what could get him there?

We’ve touched on a lot of the emotional appeal to bring Flagg back home, though there are a couple of things we didn’t get around to.

Flagg’s mother, Kelly, played basketball at Maine and was a team captain as a senior. The university’s Orono campus is only about 35 miles east of his hometown of Newport, providing easy access for his family to see him play and to spend time with him away from basketball. That may seem inconsequential — and for someone destined for basketball stardom, it may not sound very appealing – but that proximity could serve an important purpose. By the time of his first college game, Flagg will only be 17 and be an even greater subject of intense national interest than he already is. Having that family support and structure almost literally within his reach could be valuable, especially in the familiarity of the state in which he has spent the vast majority of his life.

Beyond that, there’s a path, however narrow it might be, to entice him through more conventional recruiting methods in the era of more laxer name, image and likeness rules.