Tag: Oak Hill Academy

Legendary Oak Hill Academy coach Steve Smith retiring at season’s end

Legendary Oak Hill Academy head coach Steve Smith announced his plans to retire at the end of this season on Tuesday.

One of the greatest coaches in high school basketball history is calling it a career at the conclusion of the 2021-22 season.

Oak Hill Academy head coach Steve Smith announced his plans to retire at the end of this season on Tuesday. Smith, 66, has a career record of 1,225-98 and has won nine national championships. This year’s Oak Hill team is currently 23-7 and ranked 10th in the USA TODAY Sports Super 25.

Smith’s Oak Hill teams have won national championships in 1993, 1994, 1999. 2001, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2012 and most recently in 2016. MaxPreps recently named Oak Hill the Team of the Decade for the 1990s after it went 314-20 with three national championships over that span.

Smith’s 1993 national championship team was his greatest at Oak Hill. With future NBA All-Star Jerry Stackhouse leading the way, Oak Hill went 36-0 for the best record in school history. Oak Hill went undefeated again in 1999 with a perfect 31-0 record.

Smith has coached 29 NBA draft picks, including Stackhouse, Carmelo Anthony, Rajon Rondo, Josh Smith and Rod Strickland. Smith coached two-time Naismith Award winner Brandon Jennings during his star-studded high school career and also coached Ron Mercer when he was the top-ranked recruit in the nation.

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LeBron James throwback: When St. Vincent-St. Mary’s beat Oak Hill on ESPN

In a look back to 2002, we watch highlights from LeBron James’ first ESPN2 appearance against famed Oak Hill academy.

With the sports world on a pause and everyone encouraged to continue social distancing to stay home and flatten the curve of the spread of coronavirus, there have been some unprecedented giveaways of content from various leagues and channels. ESPN is one of those, moving up the release date of their “The Last Dance” documentary about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. But even before that, they have been sharing more and more classic footage from their archives on their YouTube channel.

Among the classic footage that ESPN has released on YouTube is LeBron’s first appearance on ESPN, when his St. Vincent-St. Mary’s squad upset the previously No. 1 ranked Oak Hill Academy, who had just seen Carmelo Anthony go to Syracuse. You can see the type of environment that surrounded LeBron’s games, being played at Cleveland State because their high school gym couldn’t contain the demand.

I’ve got to shout out my colleague and fellow hoops junkie David Lieberman for alerting me to the ESPN archive of LeBron footage, which we will certainly be revisiting during the NBA hiatus.

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