Barber Shop Talk: Augusta Basketball is Back

Today we introduce a new section to the Augusta Basketball Report:  Barber Shop Talk.  In segments like this, we will combine one quality of the Augusta Basketball Report's network of contributors - knowledge of the game, particularly as it relates to the greater Augusta, Georgia, area over the past several decades - with another... the ability, as guest Ricky Moore so accurately puts it, to "talk a little smack."

Ricky Moore

The guests on our first episode have deep roots in the Augusta area basketball scene.  Will Avery and Ricky Moore, two of the area's most accomplished players, won a state championship together before eventually competing against each other in the 1999 NCAA championship game.  Moore got the better of that match up as his UCONN Huskies defeated Avery's Duke Blue Devils, but the game's starting point guards both gave Augusta's basketball fans a great show during that game and throughout the mid to late 1990s.

The debut episode's other guests, Keenan Mann and Buck Harris, each played basketball locally in high school, Mann for Richmond Academy and Harris for Westside High School.  The two became teammates at Augusta College and led the Jaguars to many impressive seasons during that team's tenure in NCAA Division I's Big South Conference.  The Augusta raised duo also teamed up in coaching Moore, Avery, Thomson High's Vonteego Cummings (Pittsburgh University), Richmond Academy's Tyrone Shine (Seton Hall), North Augusta's Antonio Grant (South Carolina), and countless other local players who eventually played major college basketball after participating on Mann and Harris's Augusta Metros AAU spring and summer team.

Enjoy the first episode (above) as Avery makes a statement, Mann provokes a good natured argument, Harris and Moore give their opinions, and Avery wraps things up.  Does it remind you of your barber shop?