Favors, Armstrong named players of the year

If this is the golden era for high school basketball in Georgia, Derrick Favors and Anne Marie Armstrong are bullet items for the remarkable trend.

Favors, a 6-foot-9 forward from South Atlanta High, has won two national player awards and is the No. 1 college prospect in the nation. And for the first time, he’s Mr. Georgia Basketball.

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Jason Getz / jgetz@ajc.com

Derrick Favors and Anne Marie Armstrong, the AJC’s Mr. and Miss Georgia Basketball for 2009.

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Armstrong, a 6-3 guard from Wesleyan, is Miss Georgia Basketball for the second year in a row. And counting basketball and track and field, Armstrong has won eight state championships.

Armstrong is not as nationally prominent as Favors, or Maya Moore, the University of Connecticut All-American that she succeeded as Georgia’s player of the year last season.

But Armstrong, who has signed with the University of Georgia, is like Moore in that she represents the modern, do-it-all player who has changed the high school game this decade, according to Norcross coach Angie Hembree, who coached Moore at Collins Hill.

A former state champ in the high jump, Armstrong averaged 18.3 points, 6.4 rebounds, 3.9 assists, 2.9 steals and 2.0 blocked shots this season.

“She’s symbolic of the type of player who has developed an all-around game and hasn’t pigeon-holed herself,” Hembree said. “In years past, the big girls were going to be posts, and the little girls were going to be guards. That’s the way you were trained. Anne Marie can play a finesse game, a power game, take you off the drive, post you up. Because of players like that, the girls’ game has gotten better.”

Favors is the classic power forward, and there’s not a better one in the country, most agree. He has won the Naismith Trophy and is the McDonald’s national player of the year.

Favors, who has committed to Georgia Tech, averaged 28.1 points, 13.3 rebounds, five blocked shots, four steals and three assists. He scored 38 points with 21 rebounds in the 81-62 victory against Westover the state final as South Atlanta won its first championship.

“Nobody will argue if you say Derrick Favors is best player in country,” said Dave Telep, the national recruiting director for Scout.com. “He’s as safe as it comes because of what he does. He hangs his hat on blocking shots and rebounds, and on offense, he takes what he can and expands his game every year.”

He’s the latest name in an unprecedented run of nationally famous Georgia high school boys players.

It began in 1999, when Donnell Harvey of Randolph-Clay won the Naismith Trophy. In 2001, Kwame Brown was the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft from Glynn Academy in Brunswick.

The Hawks’ Josh Smith of McEachern and the 76ers’ Louis Williams of South Gwinnett went straight into the NBA from high school. Wheeler’s J.J. Hickson and Southwest Atlanta Christian’s Javaris Crittenton were first-round picks after just one season in college.

And then there’s Dwight Howard, the NBA all-star who was the NBA’s No. 1 pick from Southwest Atlanta Christian in 2004.

“This has been the golden age for prospects for Georgia,” Telep said. “It’s why the ACC, SEC and Big East have dive-bombed the state recently. It’s been a hell of a 10-year cycle.”