Surprised by Rashad McCants' quick start at North Carolina? His Preseason NIT MVP award? His 28-point debut against Penn State and his 25 against Kansas?

Don't be. He's not.

And neither are the folks in New Hampton, N.H., where McCants spent the last two years at the New Hampton School preparing to do, well, exactly what he's doing.

"Rashad bought into what we do," New Hampton coach Jamie Arsenault said. "He understands the game because he listened and watched film and learned."

	“	In the 10, 11 months Carmelo spent with us, he put on about 20 pounds and he really improved as a ball-handler. If we had had him for two years, I don't know what he would've looked like -- but he probably wouldn't be in college. ”
		— Steve Smith, Oak Hill Academy head coach

Ditto for Syracuse's Carmelo Anthony, from Oak Hill Academy in Mouth of Wilson, Va.; Florida's Matt Walsh, out of Germantown Academy in Fort Washington, Pa.; and Indiana's Bracey Wright, a product of The Colony High School in Texas.

They're different kids with different styles -- from Rashad's four-alarm fire to 'Melo's methodical burn -- but each hail from places that make it a point to produce such college-ready players.

The Colony is a large public high school, Oak Hill is a small private high school, and New Hampton is a prep school, but they share an ideology: They care about the sport, they work at it, and they do it year-round.

"No question," said Tommy Thompson, the coach at The Colony. "It's a 12-month proposition. It's their academics and basketball, and it's got to be that way if you're going to be committed."

The AAU circuit might prepare today's prospects for the travel and media demands of the high-level Division I game -- the life, really -- but it's schools like these that serve as America's true breeding grounds for the wave of freshmen impacting today's college game.

This isn't roll-out-the-bleachers, hook-up-the-half-and-half-raffle, play-on-Tuesday-and-Friday high school basketball. It's pre-college basketball. And there's a difference.

"We go from Sept. 1 until the day they leave," longtime Oak Hill coach Steve Smith said. "The least they're doing every day is playing against six or seven other Division I players -- and that's out of season."

No wonder, then, that the Warriors program -- a perennial presence at or near the top of USA Today's rankings -- continues to pump out college-level talent. Or that New Hampton and Germantown and The Colony do the same.

All of them have good players who seek the stiffest competition -- and get it.

The Colony, after all, is in an eight-team district -- eight public schools -- that three years ago housed 13 eventual D-I players. Last year's Cougars featured a trio of high-major guards: Deron Williams (Illinois), Bam Harmon (Rhode Island) and Wright.

Texas is known as a football state, sure, but it's fast becoming something of a hoops haven as well. Where else can high school teams play 22 regular season games, three tournaments, district, region and state playoffs -- up to, in all, 40 games a year?

Jim Fenerty's Germantown troops, meanwhile, are coming off a season in which they faced nine teams in USA Today's Top 25.

Oak Hill faces at least that many marquee programs on an almost annual basis: Smith's Warriors travel coast to coast -- more widely, in fact, than most college teams -- and play America's best teams in some of its top venues.

And New Hampton? The Huskies are defending champions in the finest sub-college league in the nation -- New England Prep A -- a conference in which it's not at all unusual to have D-I prospects ... coming off the bench.

Even more important, though, is what these teams do off the court and out of traditional basketball season. Indeed, the best competition tends to come from within.

"During the fall and the spring is when they get better," Arsenault said. "We spend time with these kids.

"In a regular high school, the coach might have one or two hours of practice a day for four months of the year. We're with our guys all the time."

And they're working with them.

New Hampton, Oak Hill and The Colony run their squads through extensive off-season plyometric drills. The Huskies even bring in a nutritionist.

At The Colony, a 1,900-student school in the Lone Star State's 5A classification, Thompson oversees a program with five basketball teams -- two freshmen units, a sophomore squad, the JV and the varsity.

The coach also has his players -- from the time they enter school as freshmen on up -- for an hour and a half during every single school day. Basketball is part of the curriculum: Thirty minutes are for study hall, and 60 are for weight work, conditioning or another hoops-related activity.

Thompson's Cougars also play together in a 12-game summer league.

Germantown doesn't participate in a specific off-season league, but the kids on the Philly-area team often run through late-night workouts with a respected in-house trainer -- Toronto Raptors point guard Alvin Williams, who just happens to be a GA alum.

And Germantown scrimmages with the college kids at Villanova and LaSalle in the spring and fall. So for Walsh, Lee Melchionni (a Duke walk on) and Ted Skuchas (Vanderbilt) -- last year's senior threesome -- the ACC and the SEC have a bit of a "been there, done that" feel.

"Having two big-time Division I players on my team?" Walsh said. "Playing against that kind of competition every day? No question it helped."

"When Mike Krzyzewski was recruiting Lee, he sat in my office and said, 'I like recruiting out of here,'" Fenerty added. "He said, 'Your kids are always academically sound, and it's like they've already played on a college team.'"

Certainly seems that way down at Oak Hill.

Smith and his staff put the Warriors through individual workouts three times a week in the fall and spring, focusing on conditioning and shooting, simulating college-like game situations at a college-like practice pace.

And it works.

Oak Hill's heady list of hoops alums includes NBA players Jerry Stackhouse, Ron Mercer, Jeff McInnis, Steve Jackson and Sagana Diop. Big-time NCAA rosters are littered with Warriors, too: Travis Watson (Virginia), Jules Camara (Kentucky), Justin Gray (Wake Forest), Antywane Robinson (Temple) -- and the dazzling Anthony, of course.

Understand, though: It's always been this way. But with NBA early entrants and rapid roster turnover -- the simple fact that more and more major college programs need immediate help -- the kids who are most prepared become that much more pronounced.

And those kids are coming from the most forward-thinking basketball environments. Put it this way: Most of these so-called new-age freshmen aren't coming from spots that see basketball as something to do in between football and baseball.

"In the 10, 11 months Carmelo spent with us, he put on about 20 pounds and he really improved as a ball-handler," Smith said. "If we had had him for two years, I don't know what he would've looked like -- but he probably wouldn't be in college."

But he is. And he's blitzing Syracuse's early-season comp the way he used to during those high-powered pickup games in that cinderblock of a gym in tiny Mouth of Wilson.

Kind of like McCants and Walsh and Wright and the rest.

As for the coaches back home? Are they proud? Yes. But surprised? Not in the least. And neither are the kids themselves.

"I don't know if these freshmen should be a surprise to anybody," McCants said. "This is what my prep school did. It prepared me to come down here and produce at this level."