The recognition keeps coming for Newport teen basketball sensation Cooper Flagg.
The 6-foot-7, 200-pound forward who led Nokomis Regional High School to its first state championship last month on Thursday was listed as the No. 3 prospect nationally among the Class of 2025, according to ESPN.
Flagg, who most recently has received scholarship offers from UCLA and Iowa, trails only Cameron Boozer, a 6-8, 215-pound power forward from Christopher Columbus High School in Miami, Florida, and Koa Peat, a 6-8, 215-pound forward from Perry High School in Gilbert, Arizona, in the rankings.
Flagg, Peat and Boozer all received grades of 96 in the listing and were the only players in the Class of 2025 to receive a grade that high. They are among 13 players listed in the Class of 2025’s top 25 as five-star recruits.
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Those three players were among nine members of the Class of 2025 who participated in a USA Basketball Men’s Junior National Team mini-camp April 1-3 in New Orleans in conjunction with the NCAA Division I Final Four.
Flagg and his twin brother Ace recently announced their plans to transfer to national prep powerhouse Montverde (Florida) Academy in August.
That school has produced numerous NBA and Division I college players, most recently including 2022 National Player of the Year and Naismith Trophy winner Dariq Whitehead. Whitehead, a Duke University commit, led Montverde to a 22-4 record this past winter and the school’s second straight GEICO High School Nationals championship.
Flagg led Nokomis to a 21-1 record this winter and was the top selection to the Bangor Daily News All-Maine boys basketball team in addition to becoming the first freshman to be named the state’s Gatorade Boys’ Basketball Player of the Year.
He averaged 20.5 points, 10 rebounds, 6.2 assists, 3.7 steals and 3.7 blocked shots per game this winter for coach Earl Anderson’s club.
Flagg, the son of Ralph and Kelly (Bowman) Flagg, led all Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference Class A players in scoring, steals, blocked shots and field-goal percentage (63 percent) while ranking second in rebounds and assists. He also helped Nokomis limit opponents to 40.11 points per game during the regular season and just 37.3 points per game during four tournament victories.
He currently is playing for a Maine United 15-and-under AAU club that is the first team from the Pine Tree State to compete in the Nike Elite Youth Basketball League. That national collection of 32 teams is competing in five spring and summer tournaments capped by the Peach Jam in Augusta, Georgia, in late July that will crown the champion of Nike’s summer circuits.
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Flagg and his Maine United team went 4-0 earlier this month in its first NEYBL tournament in Orlando, Florida, where he reportedly was being recruited by the likes of Duke and Kentucky,
The Maine United team is scheduled to compete in its second tournament this weekend in Indianapolis, Indiana.
The 15-year-old Flagg already has received at least five Division I college scholarship offers, beginning last summer from Bryant University of Smithfield, Rhode Island.
That has been followed by offers from the University of Albany, the University of Maine and more recently from Power Six schools Iowa and UCLA.