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A private high school with an enrollment of 230, La Lumiere School sits just south of Lake Michigan, near the Michigan-Indiana state line.

(Brendan F. Quinn | MLive)

LA PORTE, Indiana -- About 200 miles west of Ann Arbor and 180 miles southwest of East Lansing, a shaky street sign pokes up along the side of Rt. 650 N.

Atop it sits an arrow. It's blue and white, wooden, and maybe handmade. It points you left.

Blink and you'll miss it.

LA LUMIERE SCHOOL

1/2 MILE

I blinked. Backing up, I made the left turn, head on a swivel, trying to spot this place. A bit further up the road, a stately blue sign offered directions to the school's athletic fields, offices and residences. This was more of what I expected. Established in 1963, La Lumiere is one of the premier private schools in Indiana.

I found a parking lot near the front office. Two young teenagers, a boy and girl in perfectly starched uniforms and graham-cracker golden hair, were dropped off in a luxury car. Of La Lumiere's 230 total students, spanning from 9th to 12th grade, about half are day students and half are boarding.

Of those boarding students, one is Jaren Jackson Jr. A 6-foot-10 power forward ranked as one of the best senior high school basketball players in the country, he stands out a bit. On Thursday morning, he was celebrating both his 17th birthday and his commitment to play college basketball at Michigan State. It was a big occasion.

Jackson, wearing a blue blazer, blue tie and khakis, smiled as passerby's offered congratulations. Some teammates came over. In an instant, he was surrounded by Brian Bowen, one of the best 2017 small forwards in the country; Tyger Campbell, perhaps the best 2019 point guard in America; Jacob Epperson, one of the top bigs in the 2017 class; and Jordan Poole, a top 2017 shooting guard; among others.

"Oh, you think you're a big deal, Mr. Jackson?" one teammate called out.

Everyone laughed.

At that moment, with the sun rising in the east, just over the nearby state line, it became clear that this secluded 190-acre plot of land just south of Lake Michigan -- the unlikeliest of places -- might currently be the most important recruiting crossroads in the country to Michigan and Michigan State.

More important than Detroit. More important than any other major city. More important, perhaps, than the entire state of Michigan.

"No doubt," said head coach Shane Heirman. "And we're just two hours down the road."

Tucked back among the athletic fields on a sprawling 190-acre campus in northeast Indiana, the La Lumiere School gymnasium is often filled with some of the finest high school basketball players in the country.

Michigan State wanted Jackson badly and got him Thursday. Now the Spartans want Bowen, Campbell and Epperson to join him.

Michigan, meanwhile, has a future player at La Lumiere in Poole, and wants Bowen to ultimately headline its 2017 class. The Wolverines have also inquired about Campbell.

Both coaching staffs are familiar faces down here.

"Within the last week, Michigan State came twice and Michigan's staff came through, as well," Bowen said.

That won't change anytime soon. Next week, La Lumiere is hosting a massive invite-only showcase on-campus. As many as 40 DI coaches might attend. Big names like Sean Miller will be there. Tom Izzo and John Beilein will be, too.

The Spartans are hoping they busted the lock on the treasure chest with Jackson, the first in-house La Lumiere player to commit to either Michigan or Michigan State. Poole committed to U-M back in October 2015, before transferring from Milwaukee's Rufus King High School to La Lumiere in July 2016.

Now Poole is not only at La Lumiere, but is roommates with Jackson. One side of the room has a "GO BLUE" banner. The other has a green Michigan State banner.

"There have been nights where I'm on one side of the room talking to Beilein or whoever, and he's on the other side talking to one of the State guys," Poole said.

Now they're both talking to Bowen.

"It's crazy having one guy going to Michigan and one guy going to Michigan State, I'm hearing both in my head all day, every day," Bowen said.

So, too, will young Tyger Campbell. A sturdy, 5-foot-11 pinball, the Nashville native is widely regarded as the nation's best 2019 point guard. Despite his age, some consider him the best player at La Lumiere. He will ultimately have his pick of schools.

Two of them will be Michigan State and Michigan. The Spartans have already had him on campus and offered a scholarship. The Wolverines are beginning to get involved. Beilein met Campbell once and, while talking to Heirman earlier this week, likened him to Trey Burke.

"So that's not too bad of a comparison," Campbell said.

In a recent development, Michigan State is also pursuing Epperson, a 6-foot-11 Australian. The staff has made contact and interest is building. Izzo is expected to extend the senior power forward an offer when he sees him in-person.

Essentially unknown in recruiting circles only a few months ago, Epperson traveled to the states this summer to check out AAU ball. He promptly blew up, seeing DI coaches line the court three-deep to watch him. With that, he decided to stay in the U.S. for his final year of high school. Heirman contacted him and, boom, La Lumiere had another prime prospect, one considering MSU, Texas, Marquette, Utah and Toledo.

"It's all happened so quickly," Epperson said. "But it made sense to come here. This was the best place for me to improve my basketball, especially playing with Jaren, one of the best big men in the country."

This is how things go at La Lumiere. Talent attracts talent. With one comes the other and, ever since a former headmaster decided to make basketball a priority seven years ago, the program has been building toward this.

Alan Huss, the school's former head coach, built a 102-19 record and coached a dozen Division I players in a four-year tenure at the school. When he left La Lumiere for an assistant-coaching position at New Mexico in 2014, Heirman, his assistant, was promoted.

Heirman was a former player at Tulsa, where he played for Doug Wojcik, an ex-Michigan State assistant. In three years at La Lumiere, Heirman has kept the train rolling, continuing its status as a prep powerhouse. Last year, the Lakers lost to Oak Hill Academy in the Dick's Sporting Goods National Championship game.

Heirman has also taken on the role as defender of La Lumiere's mission. Prep schools, notably ones flush with talent, often carry stigmas: They're basketball factories, they poach players, the coaches are snake charmers, academics are, at best, a lark.

In many cases, depending on the place, there's truth in those headwinds.

Heirman doesn't hide from the fact that La Lumiere recruits the best of the best, but quickly testifies that this is not some basketball incubator. With average class sizes of 11 students, players exist among the general population at the school, he says, not in some safe haven. At La Lumiere, while the science center is state of the art, the main gym looks like an outdated airplane hangar. The practice gym, meanwhile, is a barn -- an actual barn.

"Our school and our community doesn't care if you play basketball," Heirman said. "You are another kid. We'll celebrate you when you do things well, like everyone else, but tomorrow you better be on-time to math."

Most of the players at La Lumiere are on financial aid packages that cover the $38,000-per-year boarding tuition. Make no mistake, they come to gain maximum exposure, work with like-minded elite talent and play a national schedule. Additionally, the program is sponsored by Nike.

"No one has a problem with the musician or the dancer that goes out to Juilliard," Heirman said, "but the moment someone goes to a prep school for basketball, it's frowned upon."

Sitting outside the barn/gym, Tyger Campbell looks out over La Lumiere's manicured campus. It's late in the afternoon and the silence is only broken by rustling leaves and whistles from girl's soccer practice on the field next to us. Campbell grew up in Las Vegas and Nashville before coming to La Porte (pop. 22,000). In one breath, the sophomore jokes that there's "nothing to do." In the next breath, he says that's exactly why he came.

"It's a place with zero distractions," Campbell said. "Here, you're not going to get into all the other stuff that you'll see back at home. It's cool to be out here."

That's why all these coaches keep driving along Rt. 650 N., looking for that blue and white sign. Anywhere from eight to 10 DI programs stop by on any given day. On Thursday, Illinois and Notre Dame were represented, even though the Lakers weren't originally supposed to practice.

"It's awesome because it shows, when coaches are recruiting you like that -- willing to come all the way to La Porte, Indiana -- then you must be doing something right," Campbell said.

So Izzo and Beilein and their staffs will be back, again and again. They have little choice. As long as La Lumiere continues to stockpile talent right down the road, Michigan and Michigan State will have to fight for position.

For both programs, in many senses, this is a new crossroad.