SoCalHoops Recruiting News

Jr. Point Guards: Hoop Scoop Ranks
Top California Players--(Oct. 5, 1999)

Note: This is the second class in the series of rankings from the Hoop Scoop's complete California player rankings.  The "point guards" do exactly what you'd expect, they run the offense, distribute the ball, drive, penetrate, dish and put other guys into position to score, or at least their job is to get others the ball and help them score. Nope, not much controversy about what a point is supposed to do.  And most of the guys listed here are top quality point guards, but this position in the junior class with the exception of the very top players is probably the least deep of any of the positions in this class. Why that is, we don't know, but there's an almost disproportionate number of "bigs" in this class compared with the number of really first rate point guards among the juniors. Which really just means that the best players among this group really stand out from the rest. 

Again though we have to caution that the list below is not the SoCalHoops' list; it belongs instead to Hoop Scoop, and we would probably do things just a bit differently. We can't repeat it often enough, so we'll say it again:  Each spring and fall we publish our own SoCalHoops lists of the "Best of the Best. . . ", in which we identify those players (grouped by position and graduating class), whom we believe are among the best college prospects coming out of SoCal; we also include other players, i.e., the "Next Best. . . " and the "Rest of the Best. . . " and so on. 

Our own lists differ from the one below in that we intetionally avoid using numerical rankings, because by and large, we cling (foolishly perhaps) to the belief that it's awfully difficult to distinguish between, for example, the "No. 2 player" and the "No. 10 player", and it might even be hard to tell No. 1 from No. 32;  other than an ego thing, we also believe that most college coaches probably don't care whether the guy they're recruiting is "ranked" No. 1 or No. 50 either.  In doing our own lists, we've found it more useful to simply note that there are groups of players who really stand out above the rest and who in our view are clearly D-I-capable players. 

Still, lots of people prefer the numerical rankings, including Bob Gibbons, Mike Sullivan, and Clark Francis nationally, Greg Swaim in the Midwest, PacWest Hoops here on the West Coast, and others.  Are we out of touch because we don't do the same?  Maybe. It's at least safe to say that by not listing players by numerical ranking, we're definitely in the minority among those who follow college recruiting.  

Which brings us to the point of this article:   We were intrigued the other day when Dinos Trigonis called us to alert us to the new lists which the HoopScoop was going to be publishing for California players. We found the lists when we visited the HoopScoop's subscription area (if you're not a subscriber, you'll have to pay to become a member, but the price is cheap and well worth it).  Clark Francis has told us we can use his data "any way you want," so we've taken him up on that and reworked his listings just a bit, organizing players by position and by region within SoCal. 

As to how Francis does his lists, it's clear that Clark can't actually get out to see everyone, and for sure, there are some names on the lists ( a few on the the senior list) who shouldn't be there because they've graduated (Dony Legans, who is at Navy is one that comes to mind).  Clark also can't personally evaluate all the players, so he enlisted the help of Dinos and Joel Franciso.     In defense of Clark though (not that he needs defending), he did get to the West Coast regularly this year, and in addition to making the usual pilgrimage to Vegas for the adidas Big Time Tournament and the Nike Summer National Championships, he was probably the only East Coast guy to come out for the Long Beach Fall Hoops Classic, so he's seen more of the California players on different occasions than probably anyone except those of us who focus primarily on California.  

The California player rankings that you'll find at the HoopScoop's subscription site are a continuous, single list broken down only by class (they do take up at least seven pages though) and they list each player in order of the HoopScoop's preference;  we've reorganized all the players, listing them by position instead, so that we can see who HoopScoop likes at each position. 

With the point guards, we have not used the separate "NorCal" and "SoCal" rankings, because the Hoop Scoop oonly listed three NorCal players at this position, which is really astounding, but that's all that were listed.  As for what we mean "NorCal" we've used the CIF definition which has Fresno in the Southern half of the State of California, even though any third grade geography student will tell you that Fresno is a whole lot closer to Northern California than it is to San Diego. . . . So for our purposes in the lists which will follow, Fresno is in "SoCal".   Hey, if you don't like it, talk to the CIF about it.   

Again, if you want to see the full, unexpurgated and unrefined list (which includes players in all the classes and all positions), you'll have to get a subscription to the HoopScoop.  The price is small and you'll get a ton of information daily, much of it the kind you can't get anywhere else. Like it or not, Clark has been writing about basketball recruiting for more than 20 years and it's what he does for a living, so he must be doing something right.

We've already featured the HoopScoop's rankings for the senior point guards,  senior shooting guards, senior wing forwards, senior power forwards, and senior centers; now it's time to get to the Hoop Scoop's junior rankings.   The other junior positions, junior shooting guards, junior wing forwards,   junior power forwards and junior centers will also be posted up and linked to shortly.

Since there were only three juniors designated as point guards from NorCal, we've also dispensed with the differentiation between the two regions; we would not, however, call Joe See a "point guard" and had we been doing this list would have listed him at the shooting guard spot, because that is, in our opinion where he is best, and he's a tremendously good shooter, much better than he is at playing point.  But that's just our opinion. Here's the Hoop Scoop's opinion.

Junior Point Guards--HoopScoop/Fullcourt Press Rankings--All California Players

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