City of Basketball Love

Joseph Santoliquito (@jsantoliquito)
––

Watching him move with and without the ball, it is easy to forget that Cristo Rey’s Devin Booker only began playing organized basketball his freshman year of high school. The 6-foot-5 senior guard is a fluid scorer, scrappy defender, and possesses an endless desire to improve. It’s why in such a quick period of time, Booker transformed himself into a Division I basketball player and how that translated into him going to George Mason.

Booker has scored 1,000 points in just two seasons at Cristo Rey, coming off a junior year in which he averaged 17.8 points, 6.2 rebounds and shot 54% inside the three-point arc and 43% beyond it (made 64 three-pointers). Booker chose George Mason over Duquesne, La Salle, Drexel, St. Louis and Florida Gulf Coast.

“I liked the family atmosphere at George Mason, and I felt like I was being as welcomed there as I was at Cristo Rey,” said Booker, who visited George Mason the last weekend of August, and committed to the Fairfax, Virginia, school on September 13 and made it public on social media on September 19. “George Mason offered during my high school live period and have stayed in touch with me. George Mason plays a fast-paced game and they shoot threes. They play the kind of game that fits my style. The deciding moment came from the vibe of the coaches. I feel like I am going to the Fairfax version of Cristo Rey for another four years.”

Former George Mason standout guard Tony Skinn completed his first season as head coach of the Patriots with a 20-12 overall record and 9-9 in the Atlantic 10, where the Patriots were ousted in the second round of the A-10 tournament by St. Joe’s. There are no local area players on the current George Mason roster.

Booker said Duquesne and La Salle were definitely in the running and finished a close second to George Mason.

“It was close between the three of them. La Salle and coach (Fran) Dunphy were among the first to offer me, you can’t go wrong with coach Dunphy,” Booker said. “Duquesne felt like a potential home, too. It just came down to George Mason having what those two schools did not have: George Mason was out of the state. I love Philly, I love the Philly hoops community. I just wanted to go somewhere different, somewhere outside the city.

“I think it’s close, closer than you think. It’s a three-hour drive from Philly, so I am pretty close to home. This is absolutely a relief for me. I can just play basketball my senior year. You don’t have to worry about coaches. You don’t have to worry about being recruited, you know where you are going and all you have to do is work at being better.”

A transfer from Imhotep Charter after his freshman year, the lithe wing carries a 3.6 GPA. He is projected to be a two or three at George Mason, and he helped his stock this summer playing for Kyle Lowry’s K-Low Elite on the Adidas circuit. He proved to be a matchup problem, outdueling any smaller player that guarded him and was too fast for the larger players who tried to keep up. What’s more Booker went from 160 pounds last summer to adding close to 20 pounds of muscle this year, blowing up to 180.

Booker will once again be the centerpiece of coach Kyle Sample’s Cristo Rey team this season. Sample will be entering his third season as head coach of the Blue Pride, who finished 25-6 overall and reached the semifinals of the Pennsylvania Independent Schools Athletic Association (PAISAA) tournament, where they lost to eventual PAISAA champion Perkiomen School. Led by Booker, Cristo Rey won its second-straight Penn-Jersey League championship, with Booker selected league MVP.

“Devin is still fairly new to basketball, playing for roughly five years,” said Sample, a 2005 Cardinal Dougherty graduate who played with Lowry. “Devin is just scratching the surface for what he can do. When he first came to my attention with K-Low Elite, he was long, somewhat athletic and explosive, but he was uncoordinated with two left feet. Everything he was learning was being taught to him on the fly. It was easy to teach Devin a lot of different stuff, because he had no bad habits since he was so new to the game.”

Sample credited Dhamir Cosby-Roundtree, the former Villanova player who was part of Cristo Rey’s coaching staff two years ago, in bringing Booker along on his form, his feet, his handle and being able to score on all three levels. Booker came from a playground background with no organized basketball until Imhotep. Once he began playing, he became a gym rat.

“You love a kid like that,” Sample said. “I’m extremely happy for Devin. I look at him like a little brother. He works extremely hard every day and I have worked out a lot of professional athletes and college players in my time. Over the last 10, 15 years, Devin Booker ranks up there in my top-three caliber of guys. I don’t see many guys in the gym as early as Kyle Lowry, and Devin is the same way. He is an incredible athlete who is still growing into his body. He can make an immediate impact as a defender, pressing in zones and man-to-man schemes.

“Devin has also become a consistent shooter over the last two years. He spent time this summer going left, going right, being able to shoot off the dribble. Everyone has seen the improvements he has made this summer. Like I said, I can’t be happier for him.”

Nothing will change, vowed Booker.

He will still go to Cristo Rey at 6 a.m. to workout, shower and be ready for his first class at 8 a.m.

“When I think back on everything, starting organized basketball freshman year, I could not have imagined any of this, to be honest,” Booker said. “I wouldn’t be here without Cristo Rey, without coach Sample, and I think I’ll grow some more. I don’t know what my ceiling is. I don’t want to restrict myself where I can go. The sky is the limit.”   

Joseph Santoliquito is an award-winning sportswriter based in the Philadelphia area who began writing for CoBL in 2021 and is the president of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be followed on Twitter here.