SoCalHoops Tournament News

EBO Hoop Summit: Championship
Notes & Bracket Results--(June 1, 1999)

Perhaps the best word to describe how we felt after the conclusion of the adidas EBO/EA Hoop Summit III was "exhausted".  And we still had to drive about 285 miles back to LA before we could finally get some sleep.   Oh, EBO won the event (not a huge surprise), but just barely.  Pump N Run Gold proved that they too are one of the best teams this year on the west coast, and both of these teams will be very tough this summer at the Big Time in Vegas. 

But back to the weekend.  We spent all of Saturday morning driving to Fresno from LA, and then spent most of the rest of the entire weekend driving all over hot and dusty Fresno from one of five location to another, going from hotel to hotel with players and teams, transporting guys from various teams to games and meals, and watching a ton of games in between.  At least the weather cooperated, so the gyms were only muggy, and not unbearable; all things considered, it was pretty comfortable even if none of the gyms besides computech and Washington Union had any air-conditioning.  Now if Darren "Mats" Matsubara can only figure out how to get some good (read "qualified") refs before someone gets killed, a lot of coaches and players would be really happy.  Oh, and a few more trainers at the five tournament sites would be good too, and they'd make this already excellent 40 team tournament even better than it was.   But we don't want to quibble.  This was a really great event and some of the best players in the country were there doing their thing.

Overall, and bad referees notwithstanding (see below)   it was a great tournament, and it ended in dramatic fashion, with a classic showdown between two tremendously talented teams:  Pump N Run Gold (featuring Brandon Brooks, Salim Stoudamire, Antone Jarrell, Heath Bailey, Lou Wright, Branduinn Fuillove, Aerick "Chief" Sanders, Casey Cook, Gregg Guenther, and Errick and Derrick Sanders (the latter two also played for the Pump Silver team as well, which featured David Gale, Baker Dunleavy, Craig Smith, Kevin Elleby, Markee White, Jonathan Harper, and some cameo appearances from Kam and Chris Walton), and Mats' own EBO/EA team (featuring the two Deshawns, Stevenson and Anderson, Phillip Johnson, Shedrick Powe, Marcel Cummings, Chris Lopez, Cedrick Barrow, Maurice Tyree, Ronald Dosty, and Patrick Dennehy--on loan from Nelson Washington's Bay Area Ballers, who evidently were idle this weekend).

EBO won, but just barely, and only after Deshawn Stevenson absolutely took over the game in the last 6 minutes. Deshawn, playing with 4 personal fouls in those last six minutes, scored whenever and however he wanted to,  hitting a three, a slam and several free throws to give EBO the lead for good.  Pump got the ball back in the final 4.3 seconds down by four points, 83-79, and Brandon Brooks hit a remarkable three pointer at the buzzer to bring the score to 82-83, but it was a dollar short and a day late, a one point loss for Pump and a one point victory that had the crowd applauding and giving a standing ovation at the end.  Really, this game was as spectacular and hard-fought as any we've seen this year.   It was a tough, knock-down, drag-out fight the whole way, and several players today are probably still thinking they spent about 10 rounds in the ring instead of on the court.   Salim Stoudamire took a bad cut to his left eye when he collided with another EBO player early in the second half, and he looked like a boxer, eye sealed shut, and of course he didn't return to the game after that. We don't know if Salim would have been the difference had he been able to play in the second half, but we're willing to bet he might have been, since Pump was leading by its largest lead when he went out after scoring only 6 points in the first half.  Salim had been averaging about 20 ppg in the prior contests, so we're willing to bet that he might have scored a bit more than 6 had he stayed in. 

A great game, and a great way to end the weekend.  The official scoring in the book kept at the center court didn't really add up (we were too busy watching to keep track of the score, although we counted assists and rebounds), but here's what they had in the book: Deshawn Stevenson with 21 points, Deshawn Anderson with 18, Shedrick Powe with 6, Marcel Cummings 9, Cedric Barrow 13, Maurice Tyree 8, Ronald Dosty 4, and Patrick Dennehy 8.  Chris Lopez picked up three quick fouls in the first half, and was pretty well taken out of his game, and didn't score, but he did get some significant boards when he was in.  We honestly don't remember seeing Phillip Johnson in the final, and he didn't score (at least they didn't have him in the book), so it's possible that he didn't play; actually we didn't really see him in the game or on the bench, but we didn't really look to find him either. Phillip, a 6'-10 developing sophomore, did play in several other game we saw this weekend, but we just don't remember him from the final game.  Oh well.  And if you total all the points, you'll find that EBO supposedly had 87, but they must have given Brandon Brooks' last three and a free throw to EBO, because the book also only had Pump with 79.   But the final was 83-82.  Really, trust us on this one. 

For the Pump N Run Gold team, the book had Antone Jarrell, a 6'-6" junior shooting guard from Portland's Jefferson HS really rocking the house with 23 points, and we know that's accurate, because we counted his 5 three pointers and his 11 rebounds.  Lou Wright also had three three-pointers and finished with 16 points. Branduinn Fullove played great and had 9 points.  Salim Stoudamire had 6, Aerick Sanders 8, Heath Bailey 4, Brandon Brooks 5 and 9 assists, Errick Craven had 5 and Derrick Craven had 1, and Greg "Superman" Guenther, a huge 6'-9" power forward from Crespi who is also being recruited in football, didn't score but that's  ok because it's really not his designated role.   Again, a great game from two of the best teams.

Here's a recap on the structure of the tournament, just to keep it in a little perspective: The tournament consisted of 40 teams (only 38 of which were actually eligible for the championship--there were two teams consisting of graduating seniors, and Shamell Stallworth played on both of them).  These were the pools:

Each team got three games in pool play on Saturday and/or Sunday morning.  At 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, there was a brief interlude in the action for a slam dunk contest at Edison HS (which also allowed Mats' committee to do the seeding in the single-elimination brackets). Edison seemed to serve as the tournament headquarters and the site for the Championship final, and while it wasn't the nicest gym floor (that would be Washington Union, which is really in the middle of nowhere, which is what most folks call Easton, the little farm community outside of Fresno where it's located. Actually WUHS has a great floor, nice stands, and even it's own "JumboTron" scoreboard suspended over mid-court. . . very nice, but it was way too far removed from the rest of the action location-wise), Edison is at least sorta, kinda centrally located.   And the hot-links they served there were better than any of the other locations.   Really.  

The scores in pool play weren't posted anywhere (just recorded in the scorebooks kept by Mats' crew), so we don't really know the final scores or who actually won which games in pool play except those we kept track of and recorded ourselves, and since they are incomplete, we won't post the pool play results here.   And besides, the final records really didn't have much (if anything) to do with where a team was seeded when it came time to put the teams into the two single-elimination brackets (Championship and Open brackets).  Instead, the placement was determined by the total points of margin of victory.  EBO was the No. 1 seed in the Championship bracket, compiling an impressive total 138 point margin of victory over the teams it played in pool play (or an average of 46 ppg better than it's comptition);  QBL was second with a total margin of victory differential of 132 (44 ppg); LA Rockfish were third with a margin of 126 (42 ppg); and from there, we just stopped keeping track of the margins for placement purposes. 

Using this methodology though did have some interesting results, including the potential for the LA Rockfish, seeded No. 3 in the Championship bracket to have played it's own Rockfish Grey squad in the second round (see the bracket below) and this had Dave Benezra arguing (not shouting and screaming, but trying to reason with Mats) for a change in the brackets, but to no avail, and while we understand Mats' response ("Hey, a No. 14 team [Alley Cats] are supposed to beat the No. 19 team [Rockfish Grey]") we also understand that Dave wasn't looking forward to spending a lot of time and money to drive to Fresno for an inter-squad game.  Luckily (or unhappily if you are a Rockfish fan), the Grey's lost, and so Rockfish didn't end up playing with themselves (sorry that sounds like a bad pun).  Instead they played with the Alleycats and all worked out well for the Rockfish I team, that is until they ran into the Pump N Run Gold team.

Again, we'll have more detailed results later ("work"--meaning real work--is getting in the way), including individual player analyses, profiles, and team rosters (such as we either know the teams to have been constituted or as they were contained in the program materials), but for now we'll just post up the Championship Bracket results. Of course, no one kept track of final scores on the bracket board which was located at each gym, and since we only got about half the scores from the score books (and some "official" stats for some players), we can only give you who won and who lost overall (except for the final where we actually recorded the score).  In any event, here's the bracket.  We'll have much, much more to report on later, but for now, this should give you an idea of what happened on the road to the Championship.

Seriously, this tournament really did feature most of the best and a little of the worst of tournament play among elite high school players:   Some of the best teams and players in the West, and some of the worst officiating we've seen in a long time, perhaps best exemplified by one ref who would actually change his mind about a call when pushed by a coach (when was the last time you ever saw that happen), and another ref who must have gotten up on the wrong side of bed:  This latter ref,  in a 9:00 a.m. game on Monday mornging, was so wacky that five minutes into the game, he gave a "T" to a player on the bench who happened to mutter under his breath "nice call".   This same ref, later in the same game, when the score was separated by only a point or two with about three minutes left to play,   then t'd up the coach, who was so angry at the bad officiating, got a bit carried away himself, saying to the ref "Hey, with glasses that ugly, you'd at least think they'd work" whereupon, the ref gave the coach his second technical, resulting in the site director ejecting the coach from the game.  Now mind you, this was a 9:00 a.m. game, and there were only about 10 spectators (if that many) in the stands, so it wasn't like this ref was being embarrassed or his authority challenged.  Nope, this was a guy with a serious case of a Napolean-complex.  So after this ref gets the coach ejected, one of the 10 fans, shouts "Hey, why don't you just let the players play the game," whereupon the fan was also ejected.  It just so happened that the ejected fan was the father of a player (why the heck else would he be in a gym in Fresno at 9:00 a.m.) and when the player said to the ref, "Hey you can't throw my dad out", the ref responded by also ejecting the player from the gym.  Really, we're not making this up.  This was just about the craziest refereeing we've ever seen, and the game we're referring to, while an extreme example, was not atypical of the experience that most teams were having with the refs.

We also think the last day's scheduling could also use a bit of tweaking and adjusting, and maybe the slam dunk competition could be eliminated or moved to Friday night or Sunday before the final. Example: QBL and Pump ended up playing three games in a row, and even EBO played four in a row yesterday.  QBL had literal back-to-back games, within minutes of one another, before being elminated by Pump N Run Gold, and QBL looked like they'd been through a war, with Jack Martinez barely able to run at the end, Amaury Fernandez out with a possible rotator cuff injury sustained in an earlier game, and several other QBL guys having to sit through the last game.  EBO almost faltered as a result of Mats' own scheduling, but 805 got stuck with also playing three games in one day, two in a row (noon and 1:30 p.m.).  Time to perhaps eliminate the slam dunk competition and schedule a couple more games instead.

Again, we'll have more to follow later tonight on players, several of the important games, and the bits and pieces of what we learned while at the tournament. Oh, and we'll also have the "Open" Bracket results as well.

 
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