“Awesome!” A Kid Growing Up in Rural Maine Played for Duke and Won the Naismith Award

“Take a left when you get to the middle of nowhere” to get to Cooper Flagg’s hometown in Maine.

It didn’t work out as a fairy tale script. The Duke Blue Devils and freshman phenom Cooper Flagg didn’t win the national championship. The quest ended with 10 seconds left in a national semi-final game, with Duke looking to score the winning basket, trailing the Houston Cougars by one. The Cougars knew what was coming; the stadium knew what was coming, too: Cooper Flagg would take the shot … and he did.

But J’Wan Roberts’ superb defensive effort resulted in that shot—one Cooper has made a thousand times—being half a basketball short.

But like they say after a great defensive play in baseball, “You gotta just tip your cap” to Roberts, the other Cougar players, and their coaches for a job well done.

But while Duke’s fantastic ’24-25 season is over, the season will not be forgotten. Duke played some of the best all-around basketball many have ever seen.

I started writing a piece the other day titled ‘Awesome,’ thinking Duke would win it all. Well, that didn’t happen. Still, there’s something “Awesome” about the season, and Cooper Flagg is a big reason why.

At 6’9’, Flagg was at the top of the game in most offensive and defensive categories in the NCAA, and he led the Duke Blue Devils, a group of future NBA players, in all the ranked offensive and defensive categories while helping Duke win the ACC Championship. Though Flagg is not playing in the national championship game tonight, he will be there like no other player in terms of description and fanfare.

Cooper Flagg (photo courtesy Bleacher Report)

But for us Mainers, we got to watch Cooper excel on the national stage and represent our state with awe-inspiring basketball talent. He is not only a superstar on the court but also a person. Cooper is a straight-A student at Duke University, all the while projected to be the #1 pick in the first round of this year’s NBA Draft. He is cordial while doing interviews, explaining Duke Basketball’s success as a team effort, and has a team-first attitude that shows kids that he is well-rounded and down to earth, making us all so proud.

Cooper has proven to be a fantastic role model, especially for the kids of Maine. Maine is very rural, and 90-plus percent of the kids here live in a rural community like the one he grew up in.

Let me explain. I have helped run a golf course up here for the past few years; it’s Wilson Lake Country Club, located about six miles west of downtown Farmington (pop 7000). There is a University of Maine branch campus, which is the only reason the population is that high.

Graphic courtesy TownMapsUSA.com

Anyway, over the years, when I talked to my friends out west in California, where I went to college and played some football, I told them I lived in the middle of nowhere. However, there is a “beyond.” So now, when I talk to my friends who live out West and are curious about Cooper Flagg and where he is from in Maine, I tell them, “When you get to the middle of nowhere, take a left.”

Cooper’s hometown, Newport, Maine, is about 64 miles from the golf course I work at in Wilton, Maine. I would drive 30 miles northeast to a small town called Skowhegan (pop 8000) to get there. Skowhegan is a thriving metropolis of lumber yards and water towers, and most Mainers even think this town is in the middle of nowhere. I would go through town, hang left on Highway 2, and head north towards the Canadian border for about 20 or 30 minutes, depending on traffic (Yeah, Right!!!) Then boom, I would be in the middle of nowhere, Newport, Maine (pop 3133).

Yet, one of those 3133 citizens, at the age of 17, left the middle of nowhere with the basketball skills and basketball IQ of a 10-year NBA veteran. How?

I have asked myself whether this talented hidden gem from to the left of the middle of nowhere reached such acclaim in collegiate basketball. Sure, the kid can jump out of the gym, has eyes in the back of his head, and whatever old school basketball cliche you can think of he has, but even as, probably a bit more than a casual basketball fan, I see more, Cooper also has a basketball sixth sense that is genuinely generational and all but impossible, the way I see it, for a kid just 18 years old now to possess.

With that said, both of his parents were good basketball players in college and passed on their knowledge of the game to Cooper, I am sure. But there is something more in his basketball talents, and I have often wondered where these talents came from. It is probably reasonable to assume that he played thousands of hours of basketball in the driveway at his house or at a nearby court with his twin brother Ace, who’s just a little bit shorter than him, 6’7”, but also a good all-around player, that is going to play for the University of Maine next season.

Photo courtesy Bangor Daily News

Cooper must have watched all the NBA highlight tapes he could have bought at Walmart in Skowhegan—tapes of some greats, Bird, Magic, Jordan, Stockton, Nash, and Kidd, players with special tools and talents. However, putting skills you see on television into action is yet another feat altogether; believe me, I have watched all those same NBA tapes repeatedly as a lanky kid of 6’3″, and I never got higher than the JV basketball team.

In today’s reality, even being from the left of the middle of nowhere, Cooper’s basketball talents were remarkably acclaimed in the State of Maine first and the rest of the country as a high school player. With the abundance of media and social media, you couldn’t miss this kid even if he lived on Mars, which I think he practically did.

So now, after watching him play an entire season of college basketball at Duke University and being at the top of the list to win college basketball’s highest honor, the Naismith Award, I am still in awe. Some mode of Cooper Flagg, and I am happy that so many other kids from the middle of nowhere, in Maine and elsewhere, can see dreams come true if you work hard like Copper Flagg has worked his entire life.