memorial day tournaments--kentucky and north carolina

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SoCalHoops Tournament News

Belmont Shore At Bob Gibbons Tourney; SCA At Nike
Bluegrass Memorial Day Tourney--(May 27, 1999)

Many SoCal teams will be "staying home" to play in the adidas EBO/EA Fresno Hoops Summit or the San Diego High Five America Memorial Day Tournament. Still others will be playing in smaller tournaments at various SoCal locations, including the BCI 4D Memorial Day Tournament. But there are several teams that are leaving California and traveling to either Chapel Hill, North Carolina for the Bob Gibbons Memorial Day Tournament, or to Lexington Kentucky for the Nike Bluegrass Hoops Festival.

We don't know about all of the teams traveling to Chapel Hill, but at least one local team will be playing at Cameron Indoor Arena this Friday night at 6:30 p.m. Dinos Trigonis' Belmont Shore Basketball team will feature some of the top players in the country, including Travon Bryant (6'-7" Jr. PF) from Long Beach Jordan, Mike Ahmad (6'-9" Sr. C) from Glendora, Jamaal Williams (6'-6" So. PF) from Corona Centennial, Larry Johnson (6'-6" Jr. SG/SF) from Compton Dominguez, Tommie Johnson (6'-4" Jr. SG) from Crenshaw, Ryan Mollins (6'-5" Jr. SG/SF) from Redondo Union, and Tito Maddox (6'-4" Sr. PG). We have no idea whether Wesley Stokes (5'-10" Jr. PG) will be traveling with this group, but when we spoke with Dinos he did not mention whether he would or not, but did confirm the rest of the roster.

As we said, Belmont Shore will play Friday night at 6:30 p.m. at Cameron Indoor Arena on the Duke Campus against the Illinois Elite team, a squad of mostly down-State guys from southern Illinois. Then, Saturday morning at 9:00 a.m., Belmont is scheduled to play the New Orleans Jazz, and this should be one of the best games of the tournament as Tito Maddox, who has signed with Fresno State matches up against Chris Duhon (6'-1" Jr. PG) from Slidell, Louisiana. Chris is rumored to be high on UCLA's list of prospects for a year from now, and he really impressed a lot of people, including us, when we saw him last summer at the adidas Double Pump Best of Summer Tournament at CSU Dominguez Hills. He's lightning quick, an excellent passer, and may have some incentive to locate here in the SoCal region for college because he has family here (he's reportedly related to Montel Duhon (6'-3" Jr. SG) from Venic High, who will be playing for the Pump Bronze team in Fresno this weekend).

Other teams who will be playing at the Gibbons event will include Houston Select with Alton Ford, the Illinois Fire with Imari Sawyer, the Atlanta Celtics, DC Stars (which is basically De Matha HS), DC Assault, the Massachussets Wildcats with Scott Hazelton (they were the runners-up at the Spiece Run N' Slam Tournament a few weeks ago), and many other teams.

Actually, from a national recruiting perspective, it looks like the Nike Kentucky Bluegrass Hoop Festival in Lexington, Kentucky and the Gibbons event will draw most of the talent from East of the Mississippi. Why that is so, is principally because most of the adidas sponsored teams that won't be traveling to California will be playing at either the Gibbons event or at other Eastern regional tournaments, while Nike's grassroots folks reportedly put the word out that they wanted all of their sponsored teams to show up for the Bluegrass event. Hence, Pat Barrett's SCA team (Tyson Chandler, Steve Moore, Keilon Fortune, et.al., mostly the rest of the Dominguez and Mater Dei teams) will be in Kentucky, along with Miles Gonzales' Sports Express team, which just returned from their outing in Douai, France (no word on the level of success, but more on that later). And it looks like the Sports Express team will have a different makeup than the team that traveled to France, because Lou Wright (6'-6" Jr. SG) from Westchester, E.J. Harris (6'-3" Jr. PG) from Crenshaw, Branduinn Fullove (6'-5" Jr. SG) from Simi, and Andrew Zahn (6'-9" Jr. PF/C) from Redondo Union, who all played for Miles last week, will rejoin (or in the case of E.J., join for the first time) the Pump N Run teams playing in Fresno.

We also heard that two Howard Pulley teams from Minnesota will also be in Lexington. Our good friend Joe Hyser let us in on what's been happening with the Pulley guys. Here's what he sent us yesterday:

I know that this is not a West Coast event but I thought that you may be interested to know that the Howard Pulley team from Minnesota won the St. Louis Eagle Invitational sponsored by Nike last weekend. Last year we went to the semi-finals of the Izzy Washington's Slam-n-Jam in Longbeach losing to Riverside Church on a last second shot in sudden death overtime and we appreciated your coverage last year in your online publication. We have a strong team this year.

Boone, Gilbert star in St. Louis boys' basketball tournament

Roman Augustoviz and Jim Paulsen / Star Tribune

Minnetonka junior guard Adam Boone and Minneapolis Henry center Johnnie Gilbert both had impressive performances last weekend as the Howard Pulley Panthers of Minneapolis won the St. Louis (Mo.) Eagle Invitational, a Nike-sponsored basketball tournament with a strong eight-team field.

In the championship game, the Panthers defeated the Illinois Warriors 76-69 in overtime as Boone, the tournament MVP, had 23 points and nine assists. Gilbert had 16 points, 12 on dunks, 17 rebounds and four blocks.

Gilbert, who is 6-8, was facing 6-8 Darius Mills, ranked by many recruiting services as among the nation's best five players, and 6-9 T.J. Cummings, the son of NBA player Terry Cummings. Boone averaged 16 points and eight assists in three games. Tartan's Jake Sullivan, another Panther, averaged a tournament high 23 points. Two Panthers teams will play in the Nike Bluegrass Classic next weekend at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Ky.

Time permitting, we'll try to provide updates to both these tournaments, at least from the perspective of the SoCal-based teams who are playing as the weekend progresses. Hey, we're not making any promises, because Fresno is pretty far from Kentucky and North Carolina, but armed with cell phones and a computer and a modem, just about anything is possible. At least we'll give it a shot.

Stay tuned.