Pasadena High School’s Rose City Classic opens 2007 boys basketball season in style

Question: Who will be among the West San Gabriel Valley’s elite this season?

By Scott Galetti, Staff Writer

Pasadena High School’s boys basketball team is no stranger to hooking up against top-quality competition.
The school also is used to throwing one of the best parties in Southern California – the Rose City Classic tournament.
Once again, some of the best teams will convene in the Bulldogs gymnasium beginning Monday for the fourth annual running of the tournament, hosted by the 2006-07 CIF-Southern Section Division II-AA champion Bulldogs.
Among the teams signed up for the tournament are Muir, Arcadia, Price, Dorsey, CIF-State Division V runner-up View Park Prep, Eisenhower, Arroyo Valley, Cleveland and Ramona.
“I just really think it’s going to be one of the best fields ever assembled for this tournament, so I’m really excited about the pairings,” Pasadena coach Tim Tucker said.
While hosting a tournament is a huge undertaking, Tucker believes having a tournament of this magnitude can only help showcase San Gabriel Valley basketball.
“We’ve always been excited about the progress of the San Gabriel Valley as far as talent, and that showed with us, La Ca ada and Renaissance all making it to the finals last year playing back-to-back-to-back,” Tucker said. “There’s good basketball out here and our fans deserve to see good basketball, so it was always my heart’s desire to bring good basketball to Pasadena and get quality teams to come out and play.”
Another motive of hosting the Rose City Classic for Tucker is to get a read on the development of his team.
“We know where the bar is and if you really want to see how good your team is, you come here to find out,” Tucker said. “If you think you have a team that’s top championship caliber, you’ll find out in the first week by coming here.”
Besides being an on-the-court barometer, Tucker realizes that the tournament is big for the community.
“You’re going to have Muir here and every year we try to get as many local teams as possible and the invitation’s out there,” Tucker said. “For us, we started it out because we were always traveling and never got a chance to play in front of our home fans until we got to our league, so it’s a chance to have four home games to start the season off for both us and Muir.”