cavs tournament

For those of you not up in the Clovis/Fresno area this weekend or down at the Mater Dei HS Tournament which gets started today as well, the CAVS Classic Summer Basketball Tournament will get underway this weekend in various age brackets, including a high school bracket, which will feature teams from mostly around the LA area. So if you're hanging around the Valley, it's probably worth a look.

We've been told that the high school division will feature 8 teams, including the Alemany, Lynwood, Reseda, Hart, Sylmar, the Northridge Knights, Canoga Park and the USA (UItra Student Athletes) teams. There will apparently be two pools of four teams each, and we're sure that if we studied the game schedule long enough we could decipher which team was in which pool, but it's not immediately apparent. Suffice it to say, each team will get three games in pool play during the play which begins today, Friday, and which continues Saturday and Sunday at various gyms around the Valley. From pool play, only the top two teams from each pool will advance into the semifinal round, and the winner of each semifinal game will then advance to the Championship game.

This will be a great opportunity for us to get a look at, and be able to answer the questions about who is likely to be playing for some of the local teams, like Alemany and Sylmar who had most of their players graduate, and to get a look at some other talent including coach Norrington's Reseda guys. Again, we know that the Northridge Knights team is basically the same as the North Hollywood High team (William Kim (5'-9" Jr. PG), Nathan Stern (6'-2" So. SG/SF), Kenny Hauser (6'-4" So. SF), Eric Roller (6'-3" So. C/PF), Dominic Johnson (5'-10" So. SG ), David Danipour (5'-11" So. F), David Hernandez (5'-9" So. PG) Yan Karim (6'-2" Jr. F/C), and Gus Ruiz (6'-2" Jr. F), a transfer from Reseda) and will also feature a couple of additional players including Mike Charleston (6'-5" So. SG/SF) from Grant. [Note the classes indicated are for this past year. We'll get around to using the new class designations shortly]. We have no real idea who will be on the Hart team, or the Canoga Park team, and we understand from talking with Sylmar coach Bort Escoto that his team will also have a completely different look since most of his guys graduated.

The USA Varsity team will be coached by Larry Gray, and will feature Eric Jones (5'-10" So. PG) from Westchester, Aaron Mitchell (6'-1" So. SG) from Fairfax, Randall Odums (5'-9" So. PG) from Serra, Senian Norman (6'-0" Jr. SG) from Inglewood, Otis Hankins (6'-6" So. SF) from Inglewood, Jimmy White (6'-2" Jr. SG) from Santa Monica (who is transferring to Pacific Hills), Vincent Williams (6'-7" Jr. C) from Santa Monica, Blake Walker (6'-5" Jr. SG/SF) from El Cajon HS, Ismael Torres (6'-2" Jr. SF) from Fairfax, Lovester Adams (6'-1" Jr. SG) from Fairfax, Andre Johnson (6'-2" Jr. SG) from Carson, Twaine Waite (6'-2" Jr. SG) from Carson, and several other players who are either out injured or away on vacation trips (e.g., Fowzi Abdelsamad (6'-0" Jr. PG) from Fairfax who is out with a cast on his ankle, Ronald Gray (6'-2" Jr. SG) from Taft who is also out with an ankle injury, and Jed Harmsen (6'-4" So. SG/SF) who is in New York on a trip). There could be a couple of surprise players for the USA team, but we'll have to wait and see.

The schedule of games is a bit awkward because there are different age groups (9U, 10U, 11U, 12U, 13u, 14U and JV-15-16U in addition to the HS guys) playing all over the San Fernando Valley, and the HS Varsity games are interspersed throughout the day at various locations. Here's the schedule, at least insofar as we could piece it together:

CAVS Classic Summer Basketball Tournament-- Friday, June 11th Games
Time	Location	Opponents
6:00 p.m.	San Fernando HS	Reseda v. Lynwood
8:00 p.m.	Sylmar HS	Sylmar v. Northridge Knights
CAVS Classic Summer Basketball Tournament--Saturday, June 12th Games
11:00 a.m.	Sylmar HS	Sylmar v. USA
11:00 a.m.	Reseda HS	Reseda v. Hart
1:00 p.m.	Canoga Park HS	Northridge Knights v. Canoga Park
3:00 p.m.	San Fernando HS	Alemany v. Hart
4:00 p.m.	Reseda HS	Northridge Knights v. USA
5:00 p.m.	Canoga Park HS	Sylmar v. Canoga Park
6:00 p.m.	Sylmar HS	Alemany v. Lynwood
8:00 p.m.	Canoga Park HS	USA v. Canoga Park
CAVS Classic Summer Basketball Tournament--Sunday, June 13th Games
8:00 a.m.	Reseda HS	Alemany v. Reseda
11:00 a.m.	Canoga Park HS	Lynwood v. Hart
1:00 p.m.	Reseda HS	Semifinal Game--Pool A#1 v. Pool B #2
2:00 p.m.	Reseda HS	Semifinal Game--Pool B#1 v. Pool A#2
7:00 p.m.	Sylmar HS	Championship Game--

At least there's enough time to get from gym to gym where there are no conflicts, so it looks like we'll be seeing more than a few of these games.