By John Breech / Staff

The 2009-2010 high school season just tipped off last night, but the secret is already out on Milton basketball. After falling to Wheeler in the last year’s state championship game, Milton will be back with a vengeance this season. The Eagles return four starters including two guys that ESPN believes to be among the top 60 high school players in the country in juniors Julian Royal and Dai Jon Parker. Classmate and returning starter Shannon Scott is also a highly touted player. The fourth returning starter is sophomore Evan Nolte who took home the AAAAA freshman of the year award last season.

In the USA Today Super 25 rankings released Wednesday, Milton was all the way up at seventh. Besides the four returning starters, USA Today mentions the addition of junior transfer Eric Riley and freshmen Leron Blakemore and Jazz Felton as reasons why the Eagles are ranked so high. Felton is the son of former UGA basketball coach Dennis Felton.

Although the USA Today ranking is the Eagles’ highest, two other national publications have Milton in the top 15. ESPN has the Eagles at 13th while Maxpreps.com has them at ten. One site that’s not so impressed by Milton: Rivals.com. The Yahoo! owned site has Milton outside of the top 40 at 42.

Eagle head coach David Boyd has big goals for his squad and he outlined them to Rivals.com a week ago, “Our goal for this year is to win the state championship and be nationally ranked, and for next year, win the state championship and the national championship,” Boyd said.

Milton kicked off their season last night against defending AAAA champ Miller Grove. The results of the game, which was played at Georgia State, were not available by press time. The Eagles’ first home game will be this Friday when they host McEachern.