WATCH: 2023 No. 1 player DJ Wagner puts up 25 points in season opener
Camden (N.J.) High and Roselle (N.J.) Roselle Catholic, two of New Jersey’s top basketball teams, faced off Friday night to open the 2021-22 season in the Garden State.
The game also featured two of New Jersey’s top players in consensus five-star prospects in Camden’s DJ Wagner and Roselle Catholic’s Simeon Wilcher.
Wagner won the battle, and his team won the war Friday night, which was broadcast on for a national audience on ESPNU. The point guard scored 25 points despite bloodying his nose and leg cramps as Camden held off Roselle Catholic by a score of 67-64.
Wagner also had eight rebounds for the game. It was Camden’s 39th straight victory.
He is the No. 1 player in the 2023 On3 Consensus, a complete and equally weighted industry-generated average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies.
The game was Camden’s first in its new gym with fans forming a line around the school an hour before the game to get in.
It was not Camden’s best all-around performance — the team went 12-for-31 from the free throw line — but Wagner told of the Cherry Hill Courier-Post that the team kept fighting.
“We just had to lock in, just forget about everything else and lock in,” DJ Wagner said. “Just play hard, that’s what coach said to us. Don’t worry about nothing else. Just keep playing. Keep fighting.”
Wilcher is committed to North Carolina and is the No. 13 overall player in the On3 Consensus. Only Wagner and Mackenzie Mgbako of Gladstone (N.J.) Gill St. Bernard School ranked higher than him in New Jersey.
He finished with 21 points and seven rebounds for Roselle Catholic.
Aaron Bradshaw, a 7-foot-1 four-star center ranked No. 20 overall in the On3 Consensus, finished with nine points, 11 rebounds and seven blocks.
DJ Wagner is a third-generation star at Camden, following his father Dajaun Wagner and Milt Wagner. Dajaun Wagner once scored 100 points in a high school basketball game for Camden. He later played for John Calipari at Memphis and was drafted No. 6 overall in the 2002 NBA Draft.