An ASU recruit from Goodyear has his sights on breaking the Arizona high school career scoring record held by former Arizona guard Mike Bibby.

Goodyear Estrella senior guard Corey Hawkins is 234 points within Bibby’s record after scoring 56 points in Thursday night’s 122-84 victory over Buckeye. The 6-foot-3 Hawkins also had 14 rebounds and six assists. Bibby, in his 12th season in the NBA, posted 3,002 points from 1993-96 for Phoenix Shadow Mountain.

Estrella Foothills coach Ty Amundsen told the Arizona Republic that Hawkins can break the record if he continues to score his average 35 points a game. Hawkins, the son of former NBA All-Star guard Hersey Hawkins already holds the 3A career scoring record.

“He wants to prove that he is the best player in the state, period,” Amundsen told the Republic.

Hawkins has played some of his best games against higher classified schools. Buckeye is a decent 4A team. Estrella Foothills has also beaten 5A-I defending champion Phoenix St. Mary’s with Hawkins scoring 46 points.

Hawkins’ 56 points is a school record and came one point shy of the 3A record of 57 scored by David Holmes of Page against Sanders Valley in 1973. The Class 4A and 5A scoring record is 62 by Phoenix North’s Dennis Dairman.
The overall single-game scoring record is 75 by George McCormick of 1A Fredonia.

Amundsen’s comment about Hawkins trying to prove he’s the top player in the state is debatable. Of course, Amundsen is biased in his view, but national recruiting services have UA signee Daniel Bejarano rated as the No. 1 prospect in Arizona.

Rivals.com currently rates Bejarano — a one-time Five-Star recruit — as No. 57 overall. Scout.com has Bejarano as No. 43. Rivals and Scout list Bejarano with four stars. Van Coleman of Hoopmasters.com rates Bejarano at No. 60. None of these recruiting evaluation outlets rank Hawkins.

Phoenix Sunnyslope guard Royce Woolridge is widely considered the No. 2 prospect in the state. Rivals.com rates Woolridge, a Kansas recruit, at No. 117 while Hoopmasters has him at No. 90. Santa Rita guard Terrell Stoglin (Maryland signee) is rated by Rivals at No. 122 and by Hoopmasters at No. 131.

In Hawkins’ defense, being a Class 3A player could be detrimental to his exposure, although the AAU tournaments and summer evaluation periods generally get a recruit noticed. UA freshman Derrick Williams, who has emerged as the Wildcats’ top player and potential Pac-10 Freshman of the Year, was not rated highly by recruiting services partly because he played at La Mirada (Calif.) High School, which is in one of the smaller classifications in southern California.

Williams was not ranked by Rivals, but he was rated No. 95 by Scout.com and No. 124 by Coleman at Hoopmasters.com.

Another cause for concern regarding Amundsen’s statement: Will he purposely see to it that Hawkins scores no matter the circumstance (i.e., leaving him in late in a rout)? That likely will happen because Hawkins must average 35 points a game from here on out.

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 7:25 pm and is filed under Sports. Tags for this post: Corey Hawkins, Daniel Bejarano. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.