With 83 points in his first two games, Brooklyn Center swingman Quyavant Douglas has set a pace to his junior season that he likely won't be able to maintain.
Or will he? That will be part of the fun of watching the Centaurs play this season. And, on Wednesday, Douglas will get a chance to match baskets with a prolific scoring duo from Columbia Heights in seniors Muja Burton and Terrence Brown.
Brooklyn Center has had two games postponed and enters the week at 1-1 (0-0). Columbia Heights (6-0, 0-0) is fifth in the Class 3A rankings by Minnesota Basketball News released Dec. 29.
Bjorn Broman averaged 49.4 points in 28 games, scoring a state-record 1,384 points for Lakeview Christian Academy in 2014-15. Douglas' 41.5-point average in two games is short of that standard. But only 14 times (by 10 players) has a Minnesota high school boys' basketball player reached 1,000 points in a single season.
Douglas averaged 28 points and 6.7 rebounds in 17 games as a sophomore. His scoring didn't translate into team success; the Centaurs won just one of 17 games in 2020-21.
But Douglas isn't Brooklyn Center's only scoring option. Junior forward Christopher Taylor has 40 points in the Centaurs' first two games after averaging six points as a sophomore.
Burton (28.4 points per game) and Brown (22.4) are equally capable scorers. In fact, the two are exceptionally efficient. Burton has made 57 of his 85 field goal attempts (67 percent), and that number includes a 20-of-42 (47.6 percent) effort from behind the three-point line. Brown, who also averages 5.2 assists, has made 34 of his 45 two-point field goal attempts (75.5 percent) and 7 of 19 three-point tries.