ROCK HILL, S.C. — As the longtime director of one of New England’s premier grassroots programs, Mass Rivals’ Vin Pastore is always looking for the next big thing. The next special prospect. The next high-major recruit.
He may have found a few.
There’s something special brewing in southern New Hampshire, where a group of young Class of 2028 prospects have formed a rarely seen collection of talent. As the Adidas Palmetto Road Championships wrapped up last week, Pastore was noticeably beaming with excitement about what the future holds for them.
“There hasn’t been a group of New Hampshire kids, in all the years I’ve been doing this, that are this good,” said Pastore.
Pastore affectionately calls them the “Fab Five,” a reference to Michigan’s famous quintet of the 1990s. They are Derek Swartz, Finn McCauley, Wiji Dak, Luke O’Connell and Josh Phanor. They each just finished standout freshman seasons in New Hampshire; Swartz and McCauley at Portsmouth, Dak and O’Connell at Bedford and Phanor at Pinkerton. They have all become friends, and they all just completed strong first AAU seasons with Rivals, where the first four played an age up on Pastore’s 16U team.
“It’s a unique group of kids,” Pastore said.
Since he’s based in Reading, Mass., and teaches at Central Catholic in Lawrence, Mass. – about five miles from the New Hampshire border – Pastore is plugged into the area’s basketball scene. He has middle school teams in his program and he’s always looking at who could potentially join his high school teams. Last year, the crop of New Hampshire kids piqued enough of his interest that he made a handful of trips north to see them play.
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Pastore said he drove up to watch 10 Portsmouth games last year, about half their schedule. The other half was devoted to Bedford. Safe to say, he liked what he saw.
“If they play well, you come back to make sure your eyes aren’t deceiving you,” Pastore said. “When I went back the second time, I knew how good their potential was, how good they could be down the line.”
The next task came recruiting them, hoping he could lure them to Rivals this spring. He was, of course, successful in getting all five. But he said there was an order to the recruiting, especially since they were friends.
The first one was Dak, a 6-foot-2 guard with a strong inside-out game. He is South Sudanese, like recent Rivals standouts Wenyen Gabriel, Akok Akok and Kur Teng. A skilled and athletic guard with a stocky frame, he can impact the game in many ways, from hitting 3-pointers to grabbing tough rebounds. He’s not afraid to attack the rim, either, like when he dunked on BABC star Alex Egbuonu earlier this spring.
“Physically, he’s a monster as a 15-year-old,” Pastore said. “He’s just a beast. He can hurt you underneath and he’s put so much time on his perimeter game that he’s becoming skilled on the perimeter, so he has a multitude of ways to beat you.”
The next Rivals commitment was his teammate, O’Connell, a 6-foot-3 guard from a basketball family. His father, Tim, and mother, Karyn, both played at UNH. Karyn’s sister Claire, who played at Maine Orono, is the mother of Jake Layman, who was a standout for King Philip in Wrentham, Mass., and BABC before playing collegiately at Maryland and eventually reaching the NBA.
O’Connell – who won the NHIAA Div. 1 state championship alongside Dak at Bedford in March is pretty good in his own right. Pastore expects him to grow a few inches taller as he continues to fill out his frame.
“He can naturally score the basketball at a high level,” Pastore said. “He’s a natural scorer of the basketball.”
Dak then worked on McCauley, an athletic and versatile 6-foot-7 forward at Portsmouth who plays above the rim with high upside. He and Swartz helped Portsmouth advance to the NHIAA Div. 1 semifinals before embarking on a memorable spring together. His grassroots season included a 20-point, 10-rebound, five-assist game in Rivals’ finale in Rock Hill.
“The way he runs is the most impressive thing about him,” Pastore said of McCauley. “He’s athletic and can really run. And, out of the four kids … if you’re looking for the toughest kid out of the five kids I have in New Hampshire, he’s one of the toughest kids in my program. He’s ready to go to war, he’s ready to fight. … We’re going to turn him into a wing who can shoot the ball from the perimeter, that’s the next step for Finn. When that happens, he’s a national kid as well.”
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Somewhere along the way, Pastore also discovered Phanor, an elite 6-foot-1 shotmaker. The first time Pastore saw him play last season, in a Jan. 14 game against Bishop Guertin, Phanor set a Pinkerton school record with 11 3-pointers as he scored 37 points in a win. Phanor is the lone member of this five-man group who played on the Rivals 15U team this spring, but he’s probably the best shooter of the bunch.
“He’s a specialist, he’s a 3-point shooter, he nails everything,” Pastore said. “Another one whose game is going to translate to college basketball.”
The last one to come was Swartz, and at this stage, he’s probably the best of the group. A 6-foot-5 guard, he can score at all three levels – and after a monster freshman winter at Portsmouth, he proved it on a national stage this spring, including some big scoring performances at the Adidas championships. He averaged 19.2 points per game in Rock Hill, including a 32-point effort that led to high-major offers from Georgetown and Oklahoma State.
“I absolutely fell in love with Derek Swartz when I watched him play,” Pastore said. “Derek has the ability, and it’s unique, the innate ability to score the basketball. He’s going to be able to score, he gets his points. He’s going to be able to do that forever, it’s his talent to score. He has a great physical, adult, ready body now that as he matures, he’s going to be a powerful guy.
“The thing about Derek is he turned 15 in February. He could play in the 17-year-old division now, he’s physically ready to play and he can score the basketball. His upside is crazy.”
The spring was a rousing success for all of them. For Swartz, McCauley, Dak and O'Connell, there was a steep learning curve, but it was by design. Pastore’s philosophy was to put those four up an age group on the 16U team in an effort to get ready for next summer, when he plans to put them on the top 17U squad alongside program superstar Antonio Pemberton. Pastore knew there would probably be some growing pains, and that was part of the developmental experience. But he was more than pleased with the progression.
In their first tournament of the year, the NERR Northeast Hoops Festival in April, Pastore called up Swartz, McCauley and Dak to the Rivals’ top 17U team due to the absence of several of their stars, and they held their own. They nearly knocked off Team New England, and that was the highlight of the weekend as they left the Dana Barros Basketball Club with an 0-4 record. But they kept cutting their teeth and getting better throughout the spring, notching some 16U wins in Adidas circuit play, going toe to toe with BABC’s nationally-ranked 17U team and even beating a few 17U squads.
It all culminated in Rock Hill for the Adidas circuit championships, where the group won its first three games, advanced to the round of 16 in the 16U bracket and left South Carolina with a 4-2 record. They matured before Pastore’s eyes, embracing the hard coaching style he brings in the process.
“I think that was the big moment for them,” Pastore said. “They made the Sweet 16, so they’re one of the better 16 teams in Adidas. It’s impressive. They’ve learned to compete at a different level. The competition level has changed. It’s not one moment. The thing when you train kids is, every time you play, you want to be a little bit better. They’ve become a little bit better each time they play, so it’s been a progression.”
Pastore is eager to continue working with them in the gym, to get them better in preparation for next summer. He said all five are going to attend the Hoop Group Junior All-American Camp in August for rising ninth and 10th graders. Then he’ll do skill work in the fall with them before they head back for their high school seasons in New Hampshire, before they return to him for a big 2026 spring and summer on the 17U circuit.
His excitement is palpable.
“When you’ve been around basketball and doing it as long as I do, the most exciting part is that you can be a small part of somebody’s development, into the Antonio Pemberton, the Sebastian Wilkins, into the Kur Teng, Andre Mills, George Turkson, whoever it is you have, that you can be a part of it. That’s what gets me excited,” Pastore said. “We’d love to see where their future is going to be. I want to be a development program, I want to get young kids, get them in the gym and watch them grow. I love watching them grow.”
