00:00high school basketball is king in the state of maine that is the thing and that's what the story
00:20on nbc tonight opens up with is about how important basketball and high school basketball is in that
00:26state because as one of their sports directors at the local radio station there said in maine in the
00:33winter time as you mentioned a second ago chop i mean it's 20 degrees and snowy just about every
00:37single day so no one wants to do anything outside and so everybody's looking for a way to gather
00:44his community and so the way we look at maybe high school football here in texas that's how they look
00:49at basketball there and cooper flag is the greatest player in maine basketball history despite the
00:56fact he only played one season there as a freshman that's how good he was as a freshman there he won
01:02the gatorade national player of the year and he was mr basketball and he led nicomas high school
01:08this small program a 1a program that is never very good they won one game two years before he was there
01:16as a freshman and his freshman year he led them to the state championship and his high school coach
01:22we did this great interview guy named earl anderson wonderful guy we're sitting on his back porch by
01:28the way with the lake behind and it was just a beautiful place and as we're talking he's talking
01:33about how they purposefully knew that cooper's team that freshman year was going to be very good
01:39and so they arranged it in the preseason to where they would play against the best teams in the state
01:46of maine and he looks at me and this is the preseason before he started his freshman year
01:50he goes he was the best player on the floor that was not even close it was before his freshman year
01:57began and so i'm talking to some of his teammates from middle school and rec league you know they were
02:02like yeah we thought he was good when in fourth grade when he was playing in the sixth grade league
02:07and he was the best player but then in seventh grade when he started dunking in games and then in eighth
02:12grade he averaged 20 a game in dunks in his eighth grade year we were like okay this kid is legit
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