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.
He, too, wasn’t around, so I couldn’t grill him on any of his stances. Anyway, he could have said, “I pass� which is what he did best as a player. Sorry, it’s 4 a.m. on Saturday and that’s the best I can offer you in the way of “humor�.
Anyway, I stuck around for four sets (16 total) of the 20-minute “mini-games� played but played closest attention to two of them, with ESPN college basketball commentator (and former college coach) Fran Fraschilla – the hardest working guy in the basketball-coach-turned-commentator industry – chit-chatting with me during the two hours or so we were there.
The first of the games featured the Compton Magic against the Houston Swoosh Blue teams and the local guys (remember, this publication is based in Long Beach and Compton is one of our “locals�) prevailed, 32-30.
The best prospect on the floor is a 6-10 slender lefty from the Swoosh team (and Episcopal High in Houston), DeAndre Jordan, who plays for most of those 20 minutes as if there were places he’d rather be on a Friday night in Las Vegas.
He did have one sequence, though, in which he blocked a shot, sprinted 80 feet or so and arrived just in time to grab an offense rebound and rip a dunk through the iron. Yeah … pretty good prospect.
The two best players for the Compton Magic were Centennial High seniors-to-be Genesis Maciel (who is listed at 6-9 but looked three or four inches shorter than Jordan) and Jesse Woodard, a left-handed point guard who, it seems, is about to enter his eighth year at Centennial.
Woodard didn’t force a lot of jumpers (which is usually his MO) and made solid decisions with the ball, most notably when he passed it to Maciel, who hit four or five jump shots and had a nice drive and finish.
If he plays that way over the next four days in front the throngs of college coaches who will be out and about, he’ll have plenty of college options.
By the way, the coaches at NCAA-affiliated schools designated Division I couldn’t begin watching games until this (Saturday) morning.
But their Division II and III counterparts had no such restrictions (go figure). One of those on hand was one of the good guys in the business, Keith Hironaka of Seattle Pacific. Better make that a “really, really� good guy.
I caught snippets of some of the other action before settling in to watch the game between French Hoops (which has several players from Senegal who attend Stoneridge Prep in the San Fernando Valley) and Next Level, which is based in Australia.
A really cool match-up pitted one of the Stoneridge Prep (which isn’t a part of the California Interscholastic Federation, so doesn’t play against schools in the state) players, 6-11 Mamadou Diarra, who is listed at 6-11, looks all of that, and, although it isn’t listed, looks all of about 235 pounds.
He supposedly has “committed� to USC, which only puts him in what seems to be a cozy group of about a dozen players.
But if he does end up a Trojan some day, he’ll be a good one.
He eventually is too strong, too quick and just plain too much for the Australian team’s 6-9 Ater Majok (if Diarra is 6-11, there is no way he is any more than 6-9).
But the skinny (he’s a lot closer to 190 than he is to, say, 220) Majok is really active – one of the really popular scouting catch words of this millennium) – and handles the ball surprising well. Forty pounds and the acquisition of a dependable shot from now, we might see his name on an NBA roster.
I figured it wasn’t going to get any better than that on a Friday night, so I left for my hotel at about 11:15 and upon arrival, promptly plopped, face down, on my bed.
A few hours later I woke up and realized “Hey, I’d better get that blog updated!�
It’s going to be a long four days . . .
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