long beach pool A preview

We finally got the rosters for the teams to go along with the schedules Dinos Trigonis sent us the other day, so now we can at least evaluate, on paper, the relative strengths and weaknesses of the various teams in each pool. Some teams look really, really strong on paper, while others look pretty weak. Of course there's no substitute for actually seeing the games, and we're sure that notwithstanding how good some teams look on paper, a lot of people will be surprised that some seemingly lowly looking rosters will be one or more high-powered and well-regarded team.

We're going to list the rosters pool-by-pool, which will be a little more helpful and give you a way to actually plan out what teams you'll watch tomorrow, since the games on Friday (today) and Saturday will all be pool play games. Here's what we now know about the teams and the schedule for Pool "A" (note: We'll include the roster numbers where they are available):

Camp Exposure

Coach: Ace Daniels

1. Felipe Williams (6'-4" Sr. G) Crossroads
2. Chris Hutton (5'-10" Sr. G) Savanna
3. Andre Jones (6'-4" Sr. SG/SF) Price
4. Chris Alexander (6'-5" Jr. SG/SF) Price
5. Brett DeAngelis (5'-10" Fr. PG) Santa Monica
7. Nick Forman (5'-10" Jr. G) Crossroads
10. Mychal Lynch (6'-1" Sr. SG/PG) Price
21. Kevin Brown (6'-3" Sr. SG) Westchester
22. J.T. Leitch (5'-11" Sr. PG) El Segundo
24. George Gutierrez (6'-2" Jr. SF) La Quinta
27. Allen Purnell (6'-5" Sr. F) Savanna
32. Walter White (6'-6" Sr. SF/SG) Redondo Union
34. Othell Johnson (6'-6" Sr. SF/SG) Price
50. Eugene Moore (6'-8" Sr. PF/C) LA Washington

Orange County Hawks

Coach: Phil Hauser

1. Kade Stone (6'-5" Sr. F) Laguna Hills
10. Jim Vollenhas (5'-10" So. PG/SG) Laguna Hills
11. Ian Purves (5'-11" Sr. PG/SG) Laguna Hills
12 Chris Stiegen (5'-11" Jr. PG/SG) Laguna Hills
20 Chris Lee (6'-1" Sr. G) Laguna Hills
30 Nick Homyak (6'-3" Sr. F) Laguna Hills
33 Matt Breshnahan (5'-11" Sr. G) Laguna Hills
44 Marshall Houser (6'-5" Sr. F) Laguna Hills
     Chris Williams (6'-5" Jr. F) Laguna Hills
     Alvaro Lua (6'-0" Sr. G) Laguna Hills
     Conrad Brown (6'-0" Sr. G) Laguna Hills

QBL Lakewood

Coach: Wayne Merino

10 Aaron Aska (5'-10" Sr. G) Artesia
13 Amaury Fernandez (6'-9" Jr. F) Artesia
15 Ryan Reyes (6'-3" Jr. PG/SG) Artesia
18 Tony Roberts (6'-3" Jr. SG) Artesia
19 Ryan Meilleur (6'-7" So. F) Artesia
20 Andre Hazel (6'-0" Sr. PG) Artesia
21 Franklin Matos (6'-3' So. PG/SG) Artesia
22 Deshawn Jones (6'-4" So. SG) Artesia
25 Jon Steffanson (6'-5" So. SG/SF) Artesia
31 Ricky Thornton (5'-10" Sr. PG/SG) Artesia
32 Jack Martinex (6'-8" Jr. PF) Artesia
33 Malcohm Herron (6'-4" Jr. SF) Artesia
34 Samuel Nadeau (6'-6" Jr. SF/PF) Artesia
35 Armond Ivory (6'-2" Jr. SG) Artesia
Floyd North (6'-3" Jr. SG) St. Augustine, San Diego

San Diego Alleycats

Coach: Anthony Williams
Asst: Deadrick Robinson

1. Curtis White (5'-11" Jr. PG) Chula Vista Eastlake
3. Cedrick Palmer (5'-11" Sr. PG/SG) SD Lincoln
10. Randy Bland (6'-3" Jr. SG) San Diego HS
11. John Davis (6'-0" Sr. SG/PG) SD Lincoln
20. Jody Poole (5'-11" Jr. PG/SG) University City HS
21. James Profitt (6'-6" Sr. SF/SG) SD Serra
33. Jarrah Bolden (6'-2" Jr. SG) Horizon
43. Ben Wholfeil (6'-0" So. SG) SD Christian
44. Ronald Coleman (6'-8" Sr. SF/PF) Horizon

Teams--Friday, September 10	Time	Location
QBL Lakewood v. Orange County Hawks	4:00 p.m.	LBCC Aux Gym
San Diego Alleycats v. Camp Exposure	9:00 p.m.	LBCC Aux Gym

Teams--Saturday, September 11	Time	Location
Orange County Hawks v. San Diego Alleycats	10:15 a.m.	Long Beach Millikan HS`
QBL-Lakewood v. Camp Exposure	11:30 a.m.	LBCC Main Gym
Camp Exposure v. Orange County Hawks	2:00 p.m.	Long Beach Jordan HS
QBL-Lakewood v. San Diego Alleycats	3:15 p.m.	Long Beach Jordan HS

We only caught about half of the QBL v. Hawks game on Friday afternoon, and it was pretty much a rout. None of the bigger Artesia guys were there, including Amaury, Jack, Jon Steffanson or Sam Nadeau, but Andre Hazel was dropping dimes while Ryan Reyes and Franklin Matos were scoring and penetrating. The score was pretty much a wipeout, and since we didn't really know any of the players on the Hawks team to begin with, half a game was not enough to allow us to really observe anything meaningful, especially considering that the Hawks were just getting killed on the boards and in the open court. Hopefully we'll be able to catch the Hawks v. Camp Exposure game tomorrow afternoon since that should be a better measure of what Laguna Hills can do since the two teams should be a bit more evenly matched.

It's also nice to see that Anthony Williams has slimmed down his roster a bit from the number he took to Vegas for the Big Time; 9 is a good number, and it will allow more guys to showcase their talents, especially Jarrah Bolden and James Profitt.

Hopefully we'll have a report tomorrow night with some more meaningful observations. In the meantime, it looks like QBL is the team to beat, but any one of the other three could take second.

On Sunday, the winner of Pool A will play at 12:45 p.m. in the LBCC Main Gym against the winner of Pool H 1st place vs Pool I 1st Place (which is, in our view, likely to be the winner of the game which we're predicting will probably be 805 Express (George Albanez' team) v. the Compton Magic (which is Etop Udo-Ema's team, made up of the Compton Centennial HS team).