Casey Sanders grew up right down the street from Tampa Preparatory School, the small private academy on the riverbank in downtown Tampa, Florida. He could literally walk to it. He was the youngest of six children of Jesse and Alice Jackson, the baby of a big family, except by the time he was a Tampa Prep freshman in 1995 he was nearly seven feet tall and the joke didn't really land anymore. The school had something like ten students of color in those years, and Casey, an African American kid from the surrounding neighborhood, knew the demographic gap with painful clarity. "My struggles were really that I wanted more kids from my neighborhood to be here," he told Tampa Prep's alumni blog in 2022, twenty-three years after graduating. "I grew up right down the street from the school. I wished more kids could have the opportunity and experiences that I was able to have."
The school gave him those opportunities. Coach Joe Fenlon, who would coach him for four years, became the first authority figure in his basketball life who was both deadly serious about the work and genuinely funny — "quietly snarky and usually correct," as Sanders put it. "Anytime that I got sad or depressed, overwhelmed, I'd walk into his office and he'd ask me 'What's going on?' and I'd be able to just sit down, relax and talk." Outside the gym, Tampa Prep's classroom culture forced Sanders to up his game academically. "I found I was a brighter student than I gave myself credit for. That's what makes Tampa Prep special — it was the first time I learned to compete, on and off the court."
On the court, what he did was transcendent. From 1995 to 1999, Casey Sanders scored more than 2,400 points and recorded over 500 blocks at Tampa Prep. As a junior he averaged 20 points, 9 rebounds, and 5 blocks per game. As a senior — 1998-99 — he averaged 22 points, 11 rebounds, and 7 blocks per game. He recorded a state-record 19 blocks in a single game and finished his prep career as the second-leading shot blocker in U.S. high school history with a 7.0 average per game. He had 26 career triple-doubles. He led Tampa Prep to three consecutive state tournament appearances; over his last three years the team went 89-10. He was named McDonald's All-American, played in the McDonald's All-American Game, the Hoops Summit, the Capital Classic, and the DeMatha Invitational. He was Florida's Class AAA Player of the Year. He was Florida Mr. Basketball. The Recruiting Services Consensus Index ranked him #16 in the country in the Class of 1999.
When the recruiting smoke cleared, the choice was Duke. He'd be the McDonald's All-American center on a freshman class arriving in Durham in fall 1999 alongside Jason Williams (the rated #1 point guard in America), Mike Dunleavy Jr. (the long-armed 6-foot-9 wing from a basketball family), Carlos Boozer (the 6-foot-9 power forward from Alaska), and Andre Buckner (the 5-foot-10 walk-on guard from Hopkinsville, Kentucky). Together they would average 40.5 points per game as freshmen, the fourth-highest scoring freshman class in ACC history. Casey Sanders was 6-foot-11, ranked #16 nationally, holder of a Florida state shot-blocking record, and one of six players on Duke's 2001 championship roster who'd been a Parade All-American in high school. The future was as wide open as it gets.