July 2006 Archives

Monday was the last day basketball coaches at NCAA affiliated schools could be out watching high school and community college players in action for the summer evaluation period and they were en force Monday at Cal State Dominguez Hills for the quarterfinals, semifinals and championship game of the Best of Summer Tournament.

And the winner was . . . the Pump-N-Run Elite team, which held off the World Wide Renegades of Georgia in the title game Monday afternoon, 74-67.

It’s never too late to be discovered by college basketball recruiters. And Dezon Otis, the 6-foot-3 guard who graduated from Dominguez High in June, is the latest player from Southern California to attest to that.

Otis, who was coached by his father, Russell Otis, with the Dons, was offered a scholarship by University of Texas-San Antonio Coach Brooks Thompson over the weekend, after the former Arizona State assistant (and Oklahoma State guard) watched him play at the Pangos/Fullcourt Press End of the Trail Tournament at Lynwood High.

According to Coach Otis, Dan O’Dowd – who was on the ASU staff with Thompson last season and joined Thompson at UTSA – saw Otis playing for The Hood at Lynwood and discovered that Otis had no college plans as of yet.

LAS VEGAS – All in all, it was a pretty nifty Wednesday for the Southern California high school basketball scene:

Artesia senior-to-be James Harden, roughly eight hours after scoring 34 points in the Pump-N-Run Elite team’s 86-80 adidas Super Sixty Four final victory over D.C. Assault, never cooled while adding 33 to lead his team past Houston Hoops, 103-86, in Cox Pavilion during the Las Vegas Prep Showcase.

The team from Texas beat Seattle Friends of Hoop, 70-52, earlier Wednesday in the final of The Main Event, also played in Cox Pavilion.

Some 18 miles southeast of Cox Pavilion in Foothill High in Henderson, Daniel Hackett of St. John Bosco scored 21 points to help the Southern California All-Stars bounce back from a 13-point deficit and knock of Chicago’s Mean Streets Express, 69-63, in the final of the Open Division of the Reebok Big Time Tournament.

Hackett would be a senior at SJB next month but is taking three summer school classes in an attempt to fulfill his graduation requirements and skip what would normally be his final year as a prep in order to enroll at USC and play with the Trojans during the coming season.

He shared MVP honors with the most dominant low-post presence on the high school scene, 6-9 Kevin Love, who had 20 points and 15 rebounds in the final some 30 hours after announcing that he would sign with UCLA in November.

Brandon Jennings, a slick and explosive guard who spent two years at Dominguez but plans to attending Oak Hill Academy in Mouth of Wilson, Va., also helped SCA’s cause considerably by play quality defense in the second half against Mean Streets Express guard Eric Gordon, who was held to seven points after scoring 18 before intermission.

LAS VEGAS – Anyone who follows high school basketball closely who doesn’t realize that James Harden is one of the elite players in the country hasn’t been in Las Vegas over the past five days.

The Artesia High senior-to-be scored 34 points (missing just one field goal his attempt – his first of the game) and led Pump-N-Run Select to an 86-80 victory over D.C. Assault Wednesday afternoon in the championship game of the adidas Super Sixty Four Tournament in Cox Pavilion.

But Harden, who led the Pioneers to CIF Southern Section and State titles in March, played on that same level while leading his squad to its first eight victories (without a loss) going into Wednesday’s title game.

With a large number of McDonald’s All-America Team voters in town to watch the three tournaments going on simultaneously, Harden has positioned himself as a strong contender to land on the most coveted of high school hoops honor teams.

“My goal was to come here, try to make a name for myself and help us win this tournament,� he said, clutching the tournament Most Valuable Player plaque.

Taft junior point guard Larry Drew added 17 points and played a solid floor game for PNR, coached by former UCLA coach and now Rancho Santa Margarita resident Jim Harrick.

The team earned a spot in the Las Vegas Prep Showcase game at 7 o’clock Wednesday night against the winner of the Main Event final (played between Seattle Friends of Hoop and Houston Hoops) later Wednesday afternoon in Cox Pavilion.

LAS VEGAS – No one was hyping it on any of the Internet basketball sites last week.

But one of the most intriguing individual match-ups of the five-day stretch of play during the three national high school tournaments in town will take place Wednesday in Cox Pavilion.

The Los Angeles-based Pump-N-Run Select team – with former UCLA coach Jim Harrick calling the shots from the bench – will take on D.C. Assault at 11:30 a.m. for the championship of the adidas Super Sixty Four Tournament.

But the game-within-the-game should be every bit as intriguing as the game itself.

That’s because it will likely feature a showdown between a couple of the elite “shooting guard� prospects in the national class of 2007: Artesia’s James Harden for PNR and Austin Freeman, of Hyattsville, Md.’s DeMatha and the Washington, D.C.-based Assault squad.

The 6-foot-3, 210-pound Freeman, who committed to Georgetown a year ago, dropped 33 points on Double Pump Elite (the other squad assembled by twin brothers David and Dana Pump and sponsored by adidas) in a semifinal played Tuesday night at Desert Pines High.

Harden (6-5, 200) came into Las Vegas last week as my top-ranked senior prospect in California and has done nothing to sway that opinion while playing for a team that also includes Austin Daye (Woodbridge), Drew Viney (Villa Park), Larry Drew (Taft) and Clint Amberry (Los Alamitos).

Some 18 miles southeast of Cox Pavilion (located just off the UNLV campus, just west of The Strip) at Foothill High, two teams from Southern California, the heavily favored Southern California All-Stars and H Squad, are among the eight teams still in contention for the championship in the Open Division of the Reebok Big Time Tournament.

The All-Stars have a roster that includes Taylor King (Mater Dei), Malik Story (Artesia), Daniel Hackett (St. John Bosco) and Brandon Jennings (formerly of Dominguez but scheduled to enroll at Oak Hill Academy in Virginia), along with imports Kevin Love (the Oregon center who committed to UCLA Tuesday) and Renardo Sidney (who is from Mississippi but reportedly is relocating to Southern California and plans to enroll at Artesia).

The team, assembled by Pat Barrett, is expected to win its quarterfinal (vs. a squad from Minnesota) and semifinal games, then probably face the Mean Streets Express team out of Chicago in Wednesday night’s 6:20 final.

The H Squad is heavily laden with players who have exhausted their high school eligibility, most notably guard Seketoure Henry, who was a Best in the West selection at Lynwood as a senior during the 2004-05 academic year. He is expected to attend prep school (he was at Patterson in Lenoir, N.C., in ’05-06) once again this fall in hopes of eventually become academically eligible at a NCAA Division I program.

LAS VEGAS – Jim Harrick turns 68 years old on Tuesday.

And the former UCLA basketball coach will spend his birthday doing what he loves best: He’ll be coaching.

Harrick, who lives in South Orange County (Rancho Santa Margarita) with his wife, Sally, hasn’t been employed as a coach since he resigned (under pressure) at the University of Georgia following the 2002-03 season.

But Tuesday he will be coaching some of California’s best high school players, including James Harden of Artesia, who play for the Pump-N-Run “Select� team that is one of 16 teams still competing for a championship in the adidas Super Sixty Four Tournament in Las Vegas.

Harrick has plenty of experience coaching high school players. It’s just that the last of it came during the 1972-73 season at Morningside High.

This is just a temporary gig until he assumes his duties as the coach of the Bakersfield Jam, a franchise that is part of the NBA’s Development League and begins playing in November.

“How are you doing, Burlison?� he said, greeting me in the lobby of gymnasium at Desert Pines High Monday afternoon, a few minutes before his team took on the L.A Stars “Gray� (as opposed to the “L.A. Stars�, which advanced to the Sweet 16).

Like everyone remotely connected with basketball in Southern California (or beyond), Harrick has known David and Dana Pump since they were teen-agers running basketball camps in the San Fernando Valley.

Now, for a few days in Las Vegas, he’s coaching one of their traveling teams, a few months before his job with Bakersfield begins in earnest.

“I’m enjoying this,� he said. “It’s coaching and we’ve got some pretty good kids.�

The only coach not named John Wooden to lead the Bruins to a national title (in 1995) grinned that Jim Harrick grin.

“It’s all fun, with Pump-N-Run,� he said drolly, before heading into the gymnasium to have some more fun.

LAS VEGAS – It holds the promise to be the kind of noteworthy July week unlike any in memory for the UCLA men’s basketball program – and, quite possibly, for its USC counterpart as well.

Barring any last-second change of heart, multiple sources say, Kevin Love, the Tower of Post Power from Lake Oswego, Ore., will confirm sometime Tuesday what many have suspected for a while: He intends to enroll at UCLA in the fall of 2007.

Love, the consensus No. 1-A or 1-B prospect in the national high school senior class, is expected to hold a press conference late Tuesday morning or early Tuesday afternoon in a lecture hall on the Foothill High Campus (the headquarters for the Reebok Big Time Tournament) in which it is believed he will announce he has decided upon UCLA over North Carolina as the school he will sign a national letter off intent with in November.

And tournament officials expect that another “major� press conference will be held in the same facility on Wednesday.

LAS VEGAS – It’s 3:36 a.m. as I begin to type this. Unless there is a gnome looking over my shoulder who is a heck of a copy editor, things could get a little dicey. Bear with me.

The first day of action in the adidas Super Sixty Four, Reebok Big Time and Main Event (which is not, contrary to what you may read elsewhere, sponsored by Nike) tournaments get underway Saturday.

It was so hot and dry throughout the day that I longed for the comfort of being at home in South Orange County, where the weather is always a balmy 75 degrees or so.

Oops!

LAS VEGAS – With the weight of some five or six pounds (don’t assume I’m jesting) of schedules and rosters from the Main Event, adidas Super Sixty Four and Reebok Big Time tournaments under my right arm, my first basketball-watching stop of my week-long- stay in town took place Friday evening at the Tarkanian Basketball Academy.

At about 8:30 p.m., former Long Beach State, UNLV and Fresno State (and, let’s don’t forget it, San Antonio Spurs, for a couple of weeks) coach Jerry Tarkanian isn’t anywhere to be found as the Pangos Midnight Madness event was about to get underway in 30 minutes. Read the entry below if you’re wondering why an event with “Midnight� in its name begins at 9 p.m.

Anyway, there was no Tarkanian in sight but players, parents and whoever else entering the building were greeted by a “Danny Tarkanian for Attorney General� banner.

The coach’s oldest son, who played point guard for him at UNLV and was an assistant under him at Fresno State, is now a Las Vegas-based attorney and Republican running for the state’s attorney general’s office.

LAS VEGAS – Well, I guess a lot of coaches and players will have to find other things to do, post-midnight Saturday morning.

The NCAA didn’t sanction the Year III of the Pangos/Full-Court Press Midnight Madness, so the event’s CEO, Dingos Trigonis of Long Beach, improvised.

Instead of playing close to three hours worth of 20-minute “mini-games� involving some of the teams in town for the three national traveling team tournaments, from 12:01 a.m. on, the schedule was switched with games now set to begin Friday night at 9 o’clock.

What could attract Rick Pitino (Louisville) and about 25 other NCAA Division I head coaches, including most of those who reside in California, to Cal State Dominguez Hills in the late morning and early afternoon on Thursday?

Plenty of the best high school basketball in the far west, that’s what.

The Pump-N-Run West Coast All-Star Camp’s fourth (made up of the players who turned in the best performances since the camp began on Monday) all-star game Thursday drew a heavy crowd of coaches, rimming the court, elbow to elbow.

Larry Reynolds (Long Beach State), Bob Burton (Cal State Fullerton), Pat Douglass (UC Irvine), Vance Wahlberg (Pepperdine) and Bobby Braswell (Cal State Northridge) were among the other head coaches in a crowd that also included assistants from USC (Bob Cantu) and UCLA (Scott Garson).

So who could have attracted Pitino?

Reportedly it was one of the best juniors-to-be in the west, 6-foot-7 Luke Babbitt of Galena in Reno, who is also a prime target of UCLA and Arizona, among dozens of others.

But two guards who will be 11th graders in September, Jrue Holiday of Campbell Hall and Jerime Anderson of Canyon in Anaheim Hills, were the most impressive performers in the “top� all-star game.

California’s best senior for next season, swingman James Harden of Artesia, played in the “senior� all-star game instead of the last one. How can that be? He was relegated to that one, apparently, because he missed several games with injuries. But Harden looked every bit one of the elite prospects in the country while playing late Thursday morning.

A prime Long Beach State target, swingman Jonathan Wills of Mayfair, played in the “Best of the Rest� game. The 6-5 senior-to-be has already been offered a scholarship by the 49ers.

Other Long Beach-area players selected to some of the camp’s all-star games were David Chlebowski of Poly (and, as a soon-to-be-fourth-year varsity player for the Jackrabbits, you’d think I’d be able to spell his name by now without looking it up) and Corbin Moore of Los Alamitos.

The three Full-Court Press All-West Camp all-star games played later Thursday night in The Warrior Center in Cypress were not nearly as talent-sprinkled.

The best of the players in those games with remaining eligibility (and maybe it only seemed like half of the players in that camp were guys headed for their first, or, in a couple of instances, second years of prep schools) included Quinton Watkins and Aaron Moore (Dominguez), Tyrone Shelly (San Diego Crawford), John Johnson (Centennial) and brothers Loren (a senior) and Stephen (a sophomore) Heard of Jordan.

The guy who probably helped his stock the most with coaches in The Warrior Center Thursday night was 5-11 guard La’shard Anderson of San Diego Serra.

You weren’t able to hit Cal State Dominguez Hills or The Warrior Center (in Cypress) for the past few days?

Not to worry. There is plenty of high school basketball yet to be played at both sites Thursday.

The all-star games for the second session of the Pump-N-Run West Coast All-Stars Camp begin Thursday morning at CSDH at 10:20 and wrap up at about 1:30 p.m.

If you want to skip into the 714 area code for more hoops action that evening, the Full-Court Press All-West Camp will have three all-star games, beginning at 5:20 p.m. with each lasting something less than an hour.

For the better part of three days, the Nike All-America Camp in Indianapolis was a model of what a national high school ``invitation only’’ camp should be all about.

The camp was limited to about 130 players, there were only two games played simultaneously (on side-by-side courts in the National Institute of Fitness and Sport gymnasium) and the players, the vast majority of time, shared the basketball, took relatively ``good’’ shots on most possessions and made an effort to play solid defense, both on the half-court level and in transition.

All of that admirable basketball etiquette got tossed into the Monday morning garbage Sunday night.

They take their basketball seriously in Indianapolis . . . even while on duty.

Four Indiana State policemen, in full gear --- yes, even with handcuffs and fire arms dangling from their hips --- took turns firing up about 20 minutes’ worth of jump shots during the Nike Basketball All-America Camp’s dinner break Saturday evening in the National Institute of Fitness and Sport gymnasium.

A couple of them had more than enough pop in their right wrists to launch on-target attempts from behind the 3-point arc that were repeatedly right on or right at the mark, even without the advantage of getting any lift on the shots minus any basketball shoes.

"Hey Coach Massey, how are you doing?"

Ron Massey, the coach at Jordan High since the 1981-82 season, is in his 15th year as a member of the Nike All-America Camp’s academic staff.

But when Massey’s classroom duties at the camp are over for the morning, he sits in the stands with the likes of yours truly. Naturally, early Friday afternoon just moments after I arrived at the National Institute of Fitness and Sports (where most of the camp’s action is held, just a few blocks of the downtown and the RCA Dome) after a very early morning flight from Atlanta to Indy, I prompt Massey for his perspective on the talent at the camp that got underway on Wednesday.