Basketball – Darius Adams Leaving Manasquan for National Power La Lumiere
Darius Adams exited his sophomore season at Manasquan High School on track to complete a record-setting career as a Shore Conference basketball player for the Warriors.
As lofty as those individual accomplishments might have been, Adams has something bigger in mind.
Adams -- a four-star recruit and a top 50 player in the Class of 2025, according to multiple recruiting services -- announced Wednesday on Instagram that he will be leaving Manasquan and enrolling at La Lumiere School in Indiana for the upcoming 2023-24 year.
"I have known for quite some time that this was the likely outcome," said Manasquan coach Andrew Bilodeau, who is longtime friends with Darius's father, Dennis, and has known Darius his entire life. "It was just a matter of where he was going to end up. It was the family's decision, I wish him the absolute best and like always, the coaches and I are focused on the players who are on our team."
"He is a great kid, I love him and he will always have a home at Manasquan. With his talent and his work ethic, the sky is the limit and we'll all be rooting for him."
La Lumiere is a member of the National Interscholastic Basketball Conference (NIBC), which consists of 10 teams that play national schedules, boast multiple high-major Division I players, are typically nationally-ranked and have a television contract with ESPN.
Adams will be the second Shore Conference player to leave his initial high-school home for La Lumiere. Ryan Mabrey spent two seasons at Christian Brothers Academy before his family moved to South Bend, Indiana to be closer to the University of Notre Dame, where Mabrey's sisters -- Dara as a player and Michaela as an assistant coach -- were part of the women's basketball program. Mabrey just completed his freshman year at Miami University of Ohio.
In two seasons at Manasquan, Adams scored 1,097 points and this past season, he led the Shore Conference in total points scored (653) on the way to averaging 20.4. Adams also posted 7.8 rebounds, 2.9 assists and 1.4 steals while earning the Shore Sports Network Player of the Year Award and Third-Team All-State honors from NJ Advance Media.
Adams helped lead a Manasquan team that went 53-10 during his two seasons, including two straight appearances in the Shore Conference Tournament finals and a championship this past season. During 2022-23, Manasquan also captured its first ever NJSIAA Group II championship, with Adams starring in the state final vs. Caldwell at Jersey Mike's Arena in Piscataway (22 points, 12 rebounds, five assists, two blocks and 8-for-13 shooting).
With more than 1,000 points in two years, Adams was on pace to shatter Manasquan's all-time scoring record of 1,680 and would have had a chance to break Bryan Antoine's all-time scoring record of 2,499 career points.
A 6-foot-3 combo guard, Adams is ranked the No. 20 player in the 2025 class by 247 Sports, No. 21 by Rivals and No. 46 by ESPN. According to Rivals, 10 schools have offered Adams a basketball scholarship: Rutgers, Seton Hall, St. John's, Syracuse, Penn State, Florida State, Providence, Washington, Nebraska and Fordham.
Adams's sister, Destiny, was a basketball star at Manchester High School and will play at Rutgers this coming season after spending her first two seasons at North Carolina. The only other player Bilodeau coached who went on to play for a high-major Division I program -- Manchester's Jaron Griffin -- also went to Rutgers.
With Adams moving on, Manasquan will try to defend its Shore Conference Tournament and Group II championships with a group that now includes three returning starters instead of four. All-Shore senior guard Ryan Frauenheim is the headline returnee, with 6-7 senior Alex Konov and 6-4 junior wing Griffin Linstra also set to return as third-year starters.
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