While the city of Omaha will be posted up in one corner and the state of Ohio will be in the other, two opposing players in Creighton senior guard Denzel Mahoney and Ohio junior point guard Jason Preston will have a different “O” in the back of their minds in Monday night’s NCAA Tournament second round matchup at Hinkle Fieldhouse.
Preston attended Boone High School in Orlando, Florida. Mahoney starred at Hagerty High School about 25 minutes away in Oviedo. Now both are eager to share college basketball’s biggest stage with each other.
“We’ve been talking a lot this past year,” Mahoney said. “We were talking the other day when the bracket came out because we saw that we were in the same region and how we just needed to win one game so that we could play each other.”
Preston agrees.
“Right when they announced the seeding for everybody he said all we have to do is win one game, and then last night he sent me the eyes emoji,” Preston said. “We both took care of business and it’ll be a cool moment.”
Preston didn’t get to play much in high school, but he remembers getting called up to varsity at the end of his sophomore season and watching Mahoney drop what he recalls was probably around 30 points on his team in the game right before the state tournament. All Mahoney has done since then is average 17.0 points in 64 games at Southeast Missouri State before transferring to Creighton and earning a Big East Sixth Man of the Year award last season followed by and an Honorable Mention All-Big East nod this season.
“At the time when I first saw him he was big time player for his high school and I was not even on varsity at the time,” Preston said of his fellow hometown hoops star. “I didn’t think he even really knew about me.”
Denzel Mahoney has been relied on for his offense and defense this season (Juszyk / WBR)
Preston wouldn’t have blamed Mahoney either. The star point man for the Bobcats took an unconventional path to collegiate stardom. After playing a small role on his high school team he enrolled at Central Florida and prepared to leave organized basketball behind. Then fate intervened when a friend recruited him to be a fifth player on an AAU team. His performance caught the eye of a prep school coach and he went on to attend Believe Sports Academy in Athens, Tennessee where he averaged 12 points, seven rebounds, and nine assists over 39 games during the 2017-18 season.
Even after that he still only had two offers to play division 1 basketball — Longwood and Ohio. He chose the latter and the rest is history. After a freshman season in which he started 21 of 30 games and averaged 6.0 points and 3.4 assists, he took a major leap last year as a sophomore. In his 2019-20 debut he posted career-highs in assists with 13 and steals with seven in a 65-53 road win over a St. Bonaventure team that would go on to win 19 games and finish fifth in the Atlantic 10.
Eight days later, he posted personal bests in two more categories with 27 points and 14 rebounds in over Iona. He followed that up with 16 points and eight assists at Villanova and 12 points on 5-of-11 shooting on a neutral court against Baylor in his next two games. He recorded seven points-assists double-doubles during the breakout sophomore campaign, including his first career triple-double when he had 15 points, 10 rebounds, and 10 assists in a win over Miami (OH).
And just in case anyone forgot during the offseason, he let the hoops world know it wasn’t a fluke when he scored a career-high 31 points to go along with six rebounds, eight assists, and no turnovers in a near-upset of Ayo Dosunmu and eventual No. 1 seed Illinois. Before the rest of America learned about him in Ohio’s upset of reigning national champion Virginia on Saturday night, Preston already had one big fan long before that in his former high school competitor.
“Hearing his story and seeing how he showed up out of nowhere I’m just really happy for him,” Mahoney said. “Seeing him go from not playing to being an NBA Draft prospect that’s just crazy.
“I root for all the Florida guys, but most importantly central Florida — Oviedo, Orlando, cities like that. Not a lot of people put on for the city, so when you see people do it you respect it. There is no hate. We all want to see each other succeed.”
Mahoney made it a habit of showing Preston love by shouting out his top performances and highlights on his Instagram stories. Those small gestures meant a lot to the former unheralded point guard.
“That was just cool that he knew who I was,” Preston said. “It’s like a brotherhood. I was actually talking to one of my teammates the other day and it’s crazy the amount of people who I played against in high school or had seen around community centers that are playing Division 1 basketball and are in this tournament. Florida basketball is really good basketball.”
On Monday night, in an historic basketball arena in the middle of the country, they’ll put the kinship aside for however long it takes to decide a winner and show everyone tuning in what central Florida hoopers are all about.
“I know I’m trying to win and I know he’s trying to win, but at the end of the day it’s basketball,” Preston said. “During those 40 minutes we’re going to do everything we can to get our schools to advance, but after that it’s a nice relationship.”
Mahoney agrees.
“It’s a tournament game and there is a lot at stake, but putting on for ‘The O’ is one of my priorities. While we’re out there we’re not friends, but at the end of the day it’s all love and we wish each other the best.”
The fifth-seeded Bluejays (21-8) and 12th-seeded Bobcats (17-7) square off for a trip to the Sweet 16 at 5:10 p.m. central time at Hinkle Fieldhouse. The game will be televised on TNT.