re: Spinoff Thread: Best Player You Faced in High School

Played basketball against Jarvis Landry and Odell Beckham

OBJ was unbelievable quick on the court, pulled a between the legs dunk on my point guard

bamadoc the heisman offseason performance continues

Where are all the Missouri posters in this thread?

Missouri has so much baseball talent you are bound to have played someone that has made it to the big leagues.

I played against Pujols and Mark Buerhle.

Some of you St. Louis guys had to play against Ryan Howard or David Freese.

Let me attempt to answer this as I spent a little time there. In MO, youth sports are not as big as they are in GA, AL, FL, LA etc (you know the south) and subsequently high school sports are not as big either.

So, don't think that it is odd not to get as many of these types of stories from MO people. There are just fewer that participate.

From a basketball and football perspective I would agree with you. But Missouri produces a lot of high quality baseball players.

Missouri would hold its own when it comes to baseball.

Robert Davis was a damn good running back at homewood. He used to light everyone up.

Played baseball against Jason Heyward in summer ball a few times since we both played out of East Cobb. There was a time right before he got drafted when we played each other. I was playing first base and he was using one of the pre-pussified aluminum bats. I had to hold a runner on and was honestly fearful for my life. Luckily he put one about 400 feet in right.

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Where are all the Missouri posters in this thread?

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Basketball: Laphonso Ellis (ND and 5th overall pick) and Cuonzo Martin played on the same team and beat the shite out of us.

Danny Ferry playing for Dematha (later Duke and NBA) was a man amongst boys playing us.

He was a number of years older, but Steve Stipanovich would come back to town and played pick up games against him. Well, not really. Felt like I was just watching as my 6'0" 180 body tried to stop a 7 footer.

Anthony Bonner was a beast locally and eventually played in the NBA. He was tossed after getting T'ed up a couple times for hanging on the rim. I actually played his AAU team years before that. Lost something like 98-22. Remember our goal was to keep his team under 100.

Football: I didn't play in the game but Tony Van Zant was probably the best running back y'all have never heard of. Blew out his knee in a silly all star game after his senior season and never recovered. This was back in the mid-80's before all the advancements in medicine when it comes to fixing those kind of injuries.

Bryan Cox absolutely destroyed us. Another man amongst boys.

Baseball: The most dominating performance against us was by Scott Cooper, who went on to dislodge Wade Boggs at 3rd base in Boston. 7 inning game, he struck out 16. Solo homer in 1st at bat. Through some errors and a hit here and there we were up 2-1 in last inning. They get runner on second, 2 out, Cooper up, coach won't walk him and he proceeds to hit the ball over the damn football field beyond the right field fence.

Golf: Not when I was in high school, but when he was 8, played Jordan Spieth. Yes, he was giving me strokes and still beating me.

ETA And I remember Trent Green being a pretty damn good basketball player but never really thought much of him when we played him in football. So never really followed him and was surprised, happily so, when I saw he had been drafted in the NFL.