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O.J. Mayo still enrolled at North College Hill High
Huntington High School's basketball team was considered a very strong candidate to win a third consecutive Class AAA state championship this season.
And that was before O.J. Mayo.
WSAZ-TV reported Sunday that Mayo, considered by some scouting services to be the best senior prep player in the country, planned to enroll at Huntington High today. Mayo is a Huntington native.
Huntington High School Athletic Director Steve Morris said this morning that Mayo had not yet enrolled at his school and that he didn't know whether the star basketball player planned to.
Highlander head Coach Lloyd McGuffin told the Huntington Herald-Dispatch that he has heard reports that Mayo is transferring to Huntington, possibly later this week, but said he has not spoken with Mayo or his family.
"I can't say anything about it at all right now," McGuffin said. "It's like a non-story."
As of this morning, Mayo was still enrolled at Cincinnati's North College Hill, according to the school's athletic director, Joe Nickel.
"I'm sitting here talking to him right now," Nickel said from his office.
Nickel said as far as he's concerned, Mayo will be a student at the school for all of this year.The addition of Mayo, a 6-foot-5 guard, would immediately transform Huntington from a state to a national power.
Mayo would join four players on the Highlander roster who are considered by many to be Division I-level talents: center Patrick Patterson, West Virginia's Player of the Year last season; high-jumping guard Jamaal Williams; Chris Early, who has verbally committed to Oklahoma; and point guard Mike Taylor.
Mayo has spent the past three seasons at North College Hill, where he teamed with another Huntington native, Bill Walker, to win back-to-back Ohio Division III state titles.
Walker was recently ruled ineligible by the Ohio High School Athletic Association to play as a senior at North College Hill.
Mayo and Walker began their prep basketball careers together five years ago at Rose Hill Christian Academy in Ashland, Ky., where they played on the high school team as middle schoolers.
As a freshman at North College Hill, Mayo averaged 31 points a game. He scored 28 a game as a sophomore and averaged 28.9 last season, along with 7.8 rebounds and 7.7 assists.
George Washington Coach Rick Greene, whose Patriots have defeated Huntington the past two seasons in the Mountain State Athletic Conference championship game but lost to the Highlanders in the 2006 AAA final, said everyone would be playing for second if Mayo ends up at Huntington.
"I think they're going to cake-walk through the season," Greene said. "Who's going to really challenge them in 22 games?"
