SoCalHoops Recruiting News

Double Pump Fall Premier:
Some Insanely Good Teams--(Sept. 24, 1999)

In addition to the participation of perhaps one of the best travel teams in the country the T1T Players, who also have the distinction of having won the adidas Las Vegas Big Time this summer, coming out on top of a 250 team field, there are some other really, really insanely talented and loaded teams in this one, and not surprisingly, the Double Pump teams, are also loaded with great talent and several of the top high profile recruits in the junior and senior classes.  There will also be several high school teams who will participate intact (albeit under different names because of CIF regulations), including the top Southern Section & City Section schools: D-I State Champion runners-up Mater Dei, State D-II Champs Compton Dominguez aka The Hood, City Section finalists LA Fairfax, Southern Section D-IAA finalists Long Beach Poly, Fontana with the great seniors and the "Fab 3" incoming freshmen, Villa Park with their big men and great shooters, Los Alamitos. . . . and the list goes on and on. 

Not everyone will be playing today and tonight, and some of the teams won't get going until tomorrow morning.  We've selected some of the top matchups below and highlighted some of the most "loaded" teams. Several of the high school/club teams (Dominguez, Fontana, etc) won't play until tomorrow, but several of their players will on other club teams.  About the only one of the top teams in Southern California that really won't be represented tonight will be Artesia/QBL, and Wayne Merino is letting his guys rest up and take the month off, focusing instead on recovering and getting ready for the season. . . everyone gets ready in their own way, and we don't blame Wayne either, because most of his guys are pretty banged up and need the rest. 

The Pump N Run teams are definitely among the most deepest of the club teams, and actually in this instance, the Pump N Run II team probably has the most talent among the junior class of any team in the tournament.   Here are both Pump N Run rosters for this weekend:

Several other guys listed on Pump Rosters won't be in attendance, including Salim Stoudamire (6'-2" Jr. SG/PG) from Lake Oswego, Antone Jerrell (6'-6" Sr. SF/SG) from Portland Jefferson, and Rick Rickert (6'-10" Jr. C/F) from Minnesota who couldn't make the tournament.  The two juniors will travel with the team next spring and summer when the team becomes the "senior" team.

Pump I will take on the Skywalkers today at 6:50 on court 2, and Pump II will play against the Orange County Rebels, a team coached by Roger Hogan, Sr., and featuring his son Roger Hogan (6'-1" Sr. PG) from Servite. Neither of these games are "cream-puffs" for the pump teams;  the Skywalkers team basically is the same team which went to the Southern Section Division V-A finals, and the OC Rebels feature some of the most under-recruited talent in Orange County it's a crime how under-recruited they are.  Hogan is an excellent shooter when you put the ball in his hands, and Robert Turner has got to be the best kept secret among the big men in the class; almost no one knew about him before the Fall Hoops Classic in Long Beach, and the OC Rebels made  it to the "Great Eight" in that one.   The Pump N Run opponents' rosters will include:

We don't have time to do all the rest of the matchups between now and the start of the tournament which is in about 2 hours, but we'll just highlight some of the better ones.   Other matchups today will include BWBA I against the Camp Exposure Jrs at 5:40 p.m. on Court 2. Here are the rosters:

We know that the two Southern Lab guys for BWBA didn't make their flight yesterday, and Bob Gottlieb was forced to scramble a bit to find replacements, and he got Mike Stevenson, and we also wouldn't be surprised if a couple of the talented freshmen from Fontana also showed up.  Camp Exposure's junior team (which actually has more frosh and sophs than juniors) has some excellent players too, including Chris Alexander from the Southern Section D-VA championship team.

On the next court over, also at 5:40 p.m. on Court 3, the Poly Jackrabbits will take on Camp Exposure (what used to be called the "senior" team.  Here are the matchups:

At 6:50 p.m., just across the court from Pump N Run I v. Skywalkers will be Fairfax v. On2Hoops Future Stars, Fentriss Wynn's team with Nick Booker, and this should be a really great game with excellent matchups.  Here's what it will look like:

Several ARC teams will also be in action tonight.  The first one is ARC Los Angeles which will play Tucson Heat I tonight at 5:40 p.m. Here are the matchups in this one:

ARC Burbank will play Future Stars Elite (not to be confused with Ollie Goulston's "Future Stars Rising Elite"), a team which has a pretty much incomplete roster (at least not all the info was on the one we got), at 8:00 p.m. on Court 1, and here's what the matchups will look like:

One of the best games of the evening, not so much because it will be an even matchup, but because it will feature some of our favorite players, wil get going at 8:00 p.m. as IEBP will take on ARC Team Dynamo on Court 4, and this is another chance too get a look at one of the best teams in the tournament, the always under-rated and much under-appreciated IEBP.  This team actually has one of the strongest lineups around, not to mention UCLA potential recruit DeMarcus Williams, who is also going to be taking his home visit with Steve Lavin tomorrow morning; we expect that he'll be at this game checking again on DeMarcus, and we know that Ruben Sanchez, Sr.,  will do his best to make DeMarcus look good for all of us who want to see him stay in SoCal and become a Bruin. . .  Here's what the matchups will look like:

The tournament will actually get started (hey, don't ask us why we did this in what looks like a reverse order. . . ) with a contest between two teams featuring a lot of players who we're very familiar with, including a bunch of former LA Team Maccabi players who we managed to get hooked up with Dave Bloomfield (Dave asked if we knew any players not playing with teams, we gave him some numbers, he called, and the guys supposedly are hooking up. . . other than that we have no responsibility, and if it doesn't work, hey. . . everyone is on their, so don't complain to us about it . . . ).  Monsters of the Midway will take on Sam Alipio's always improving and fun to watch Total Impact, which should feature some of the better guard play today, and the matchups will be fun to watch. This game gets going at 4:30 p.m. on Court 2:

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