Cardinal Mooney Catholic High School sits on the gulf side of Sarasota, Florida, on a campus that locals know mostly for its football program and its proximity to Siesta Key. The basketball gym is smaller than the football complex, and in the mid-1990s the basketball program was, by Florida prep standards, a respectable but unspectacular outfit. Then Jeremy Hall arrived. The 6-foot-4 guard would put together a junior year that no Cardinal Mooney player had matched: 15 points and 8 rebounds per game, all-county honors, and a deep run that took the Cougars to the Florida state quarterfinals for the first time in school history. He was a recruit. Division I programs called. The senior year, by the spring of 1995, was supposed to be the one that turned the recruiting calls into a scholarship offer.
It didn't quite work that way. Hall separated his shoulder early in his senior season, missing more than a third of his games. When he returned, he wore a heavy stabilizing brace that visibly hampered his shooting motion. He still earned all-county honors and made the all-state team — the kid was too good for the injury to entirely hide him — but the phones, as they say, did not ring off the hook. A few Division II schools offered him scholarships. A few Division I programs sent feelers. None of them appealed to him. He had grown up watching a different kind of basketball.
Hall did what 17-year-olds with college dreams sometimes do when the scholarship offers don't match the ambition. He did his own recruiting. The bridge to Duke came from an improbable corner: former NBA head coach Bill Musselman, the famously intense former Minnesota, Cleveland Cavaliers, and Minnesota Timberwolves coach, had spent the mid-1980s coaching the Sarasota Stingers of the CBA and lived in the Sarasota area thereafter. He had become close friends with the Cardinal Mooney coaching staff and attended Cougar games regularly. Musselman saw Hall play. Musselman liked Hall. And Musselman — whose Rolodex included Mike Krzyzewski — made some calls. By the summer of 1995 Hall had a Duke roster spot. Not a scholarship. Not even a guarantee of minutes. But a roster spot, with a number on the back of a Cameron Indoor Stadium practice jersey, on Coach K's team. He took it.