There might be better high school basketball teams in America than St. Benedict's Prep but, as they say, it wouldn't take long to do a roll call.
The Grey Bees, from Newark, N.J., and including McCaskey transfer Lamar Patterson, looked like you'd expect the No. 3-ranked team in the country to in destroying Trinity 100-59 in the Harrisburg Hoop Group Showcase Saturday at Harrisburg High School.
St. Benedict's is 13-0 against a national schedule and ranked third by USA Today. It is big (four players over 6-8; it brought a seven-footer off the bench for the first time with less than three minutes left Saturday), quick, skilled, relentless and very well-organized.
To illustrate what we're dealing with, last Monday, Life Center Academy of Burlington, N.J., upset St. Benedict's rival St. Patrick's of Elizabeth, N.J., then ranked fourth in the country. The Bees beat Life Center 84-43 Thursday.
Trinity, a perennial Class AA contender in District Three and often at the state level, is 7-5, not a vintage edition.
The competition was about what you'd expect. Four of Trinity's first five possessions ended in turnovers, and it was 18-3 less than four minutes in.
"It's hard for them to duplicate that kind of quickness in practice," Dan Hurley, the former Seton Hall point guard who coaches St. Benedict's, deadpanned afterward.
The Bees employ a zone press that would be standard stuff with normal athletes. With 6-9 gazelle Tristan Thompson flying around, it's something special.
So is Thompson, a 16-year-old junior who's already committed to Texas. Showing insane mobility and good skills for his size and age, Thompson scored 25, including five dunks.
"He does everything well except he's not a great shooter," Hurley said. "With his body and his length and ability to defend the perimeter, the ideal for him is Scottie Pippen."
The Bees dressed 14 Saturday, and Hurley has estimated that 11 of them will be Division I college players.
"We do have a lot of bodies," Hurley said. "We try to be smart about how we play the guys against each other."
Patterson, who transferred to St. Benedict's after three varsity seasons at McCaskey, is getting with it. Saturday's game was his third consecutive start. He played well overall and scored 14, two less than his season high.
"I've gotten in better shape and I've been playing better in practice," Patterson explained. "I never really thought I'd have trouble playing here once I got in shape."
"We wanted him to earn it," Hurley said of the starting job. "He's been playing starter's minutes all along. Right now, his body is in Big East shape for the first time."
Big East shape is an issue, of course, because Patterson verbally committed, early in his junior year, to Pittsburgh.
"We expect our seniors to play hard, be unselfish and defend, because that's what they'll have to do in college," Hurley said. "If you're not ready to guard as a [college] freshman, you get buried on the bench, and then they recruit over you."
By the end of his junior year, at McCaskey, Patterson was struggling, and realizing that unless he did something, he wasn't ready for Pittsburgh.
Which is why he submitted himself to Hurley's brand of discipline.
"I don't think he's the devil," Patterson said of his coach. "He's there to push me. [Pitt coach] Jamie Dixon is going to be 10 times worse than him."
In addition to Patterson's 14 and Thompson's 25, the Bees got 12 points from Myck Kabongo and 11 from Tamir Jackson.
Trinity got 32 points from one of the area's best players, 6-5 junior swingman Eric Kindler.
In the first of three games here Saturday, Living Faith of New Jersey beat Red Land 68-55. In the finale, St, Neumann Goretti of Philadelphia beat Harrisburg 66-55.
The Hoop Group is a basketball organization with headquarters in New Jersey and California. It claims among the alumni of its camps and showcases Larry Bird, Moses Malone, Charles Barkley, David Thompson, Chris Bosh, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul and many, many others.
There will also be Hoop Group showcases this winter in Allentown and Trenton.
Mike Gross is assistant sports editor of the Sunday News. E-mail him at mgross@lnpnews.com. 
