SoCalHoops High School News

"We Care Classic": A Lot Of
Thanksgiving, Literally--(Nov. 26 1998)

Well, we sorta, kinda, almost  had a good time at Manual Arts yesterday, at least until we got to the parking lot where the car was parked. . . but we're getting ahead of the story.   Oh, and we really do want to say "Happy Thanksgiving." 

A little bit of basketball intervened yesterday, and we'll do this in reverse order, covering the Manual Arts v. San Pedro game first and then the Fremont v. LA High game: 

The last game of the evening was Manual Arts v. San Pedro, and this started out as a fun game, but then it got ugly, real fast.  The final score was 102-40. But that's not the whole story.

At the end of the first quarter the score was 26-3, and the only points for San Pedro in the first quarter came on a single basket, a three-pointer by Preon Booth (6'-1" Sr. G).  For some inexplicable reason, San Pedro's third year head coach,  Eldridge Ezpeleta came out with a game plan which called for the Pirates to try to run with the Toilers.  Big mistake.  The San Pedro kids are athletic, but they have nowhere near the level of athleticism of the Manual players, and certainly nowhere near the speed.  San Pedro committed turnover after turnover off the full and half court press, and Manual's strength is their transition game, with Curtis Millage (5'-11" Sr. PG/SG) and James Wright (6'-0" Sr. PG) who has signed with Long Beach State, relentlessly pushing the ball up the floor to Otis Belisle (6'-2" Sr. SG/SF) and the Texas A&M-CC guys,  Brandon Moorer (6'-8" Sr. PF/C) and Johnny Hardwick (6'-10" Sr. C).  Manual doesn't just run the floor, they swarm it, perhaps better than any team we've seen in a while, and they run the press, trap, and use their extreme quickness to pull off steals, traps, and force turnovers on almost every possession of their opponent.  They will be tremendously difficult for most opponents this year.

The interesting thing about Manual is their quickness; it's almost a blindingly quick style, and if you blink, you may miss most of the action.  The other notable thing about them is their depth.  It's like they've got 13 of the same player, all fast, all quick, all tall (and if they're not tall, like Curtis and James, they can jump just as well) and all good shooters.   In the backcourt Wright was blindly quick to the basket and we just hope that Wayne Morgan can hold onto his job long enough to enjoy what James will bring to the 49'ers next year.   Millage shoots from just about anywhere with that great left-handed soft touch.   They're fun to watch, but pretty soon, against a team like San Pedro which just didn't have the athletes, it was a little like watching a continuous tennis match, without any breaks in the action.  A lopsided match, but you could see the heads in the stands going from side to side to side to side.  Almost dizzying.

In fact for almost a continuous 12 minutes (all of the first quarter and 4 minutes of the second quarter), there were very few pauses for San Pedro to take a breath, and coach Simpson just kept shuttling fresh Manual bodies in and out of the lineup when there were.  And speaking of the lineup, there were a few kids there we'd never seen before, like Charles Edwards (6'-4" ?? SG/SF) who played very well. Oh, and we didn't see Earl Felix (6'-5" So. PF), the brother of Noel Felix (6'-10" Sr. C) (Noel attends Inglewood)  who Simpson told us earlier would be on the roster when we did our preview of Manual about a month ago, and either he's ineligible, was sick, or has transferred out.  We'll find out tomorrow. 

In the second quarter, San Pedro only managed to get one more field goal, and 7 free-throws.   This was just a nightmare for San Pedro and their third year head coach.  The first basket by Booth occurred in the first minute of the game.   San Pedro didn't score again until only 4:40 was left in the second quarter. That was about 10 minutes where San Pedro couldn't put the ball in the hoop.   No, make that they couldn't get the ball past mid-court without committing a turnover.

At the half, the score was 52-12. In the second quarter, San Pedro had only managed to score on free-throws.

And it only got worse.   At the end of three it was 74-23.  It was ugly.

And by the final quarter, things got really nasty, as the San Pedro players started to commit intentional fouls, partly out of frustration, and partly because the only way they were going to stop some of the Manual players was by grabbing a jersey or a leg here and there.

The final was 102-40, and about the only really great thing Manual Arts showed was that they could run a press all night and never get tired against a team which tried to run with them but was hopelessly outmanned (ok; on this one we would agree with Mike Miller, "hopelessly outclassed"  or "hopelessly outmanned" works for us here).  

Johnny Hardwick played well for about half the game, the entire first quarter and most of the fourth, but still managed to get 12 points, 5 blocked shots, 11 rebounds, and a couple of assists.  He seemed to remain focused, high energy and active the entire time he was in, and never did any of that sort of listless drifting that we saw this summer.  But as Simpson told us after the game, "Johnny told me that this summer he ended up playing in more than 100 games in the month of July alone.  By the time the third and fourth week of July rolled around, he was just sick of basketball and bone-tired.  But I know how to maintain his energy level and if I see him drift or lose focus, I'll take him out and that seems to allow him to get his head back into the game."

James Wright was the high scorer for Manual with 20 points. Curtis Millage put on a three point shooting contest in the fourth quarter, playing with four fouls, and towards the end of the game, he had an open lane to the basket on a fast break, and you could see him thinking about what kind of dunk he was going to do, which for a 5'-11" guy is something most people would have to think long and hard about before even attempting.  But Curtis had a sort of gleam in his eye, and he was just ripping down the court, he elevated, spun, and did a flying two-handed dunk, grabbed the rim, and literally pulled himself way up over the rim, so that his head was actuall higher than the box, and swung from the rim for just long enough to draw the technical and a final exit from the game with his 5th foul.  But the crowd loved it and the entire Manual bench went nuts, hooting and yelling, clapping and high-five-ing each other.   Curtis finished with 14 points on the night. 

Otis Belisle scored 11 points, Ron Cass had 5, Brandon Moorer scored 6, Mario Roberts had 5 and Luis Rodriguez and Larry Dillingham each only scored 3. Jason Edwards managed about 10 points while some of the subs like DeAndre Moore and Jason Crow scored 4 apiece.

Manual is really, really good, but just how good they'll be against truly good competition is something only time will tell. It's no real gauge of a team's strength to go out and beat up on a lesser team, and how well they'll do against Crenshaw, Westchester, Fremont (who they play on Friday in the Championship game) and some of the better valley teams like Sylmar, Grant, Cleveland or Chatsworth is anyone's guess at this point.  They are very talented, and seem to communicate well on the court, knowing where everyone is most of the time. 

As for San Pedro, frankly we don't know what coach Ezpeleta was thinking by having his guys try to run with Manual when San Pedro must have, with all of those pre-game warmup drills and discipline, had some sort of a half-court offense they could fall back into.    We've never forgotten some of the lessons which a few of the great coaches we've met have told us about how to attack a running team when you don't have anyone particularly fast, and the key is not to try to run with them, but to slow the game down, show patience and work the half-court game.   Instead, San Pedro did just exactly what Manual wanted:  They would run, hurry up and down the court, trying just to avoid a backcourt 10 second violation just about every time, attempting to dribble through the press, and then instead of pulling back into a half-court game, the momentum built up in the backcourt would carry over into the frontcourt, and they would rush a shot here, miss a layup there, and in general, always seemed to be running at the same speed as the Manual guys. The result was sort of like this: Manual shoots, makes, San Pedro rushes back, takes a shot misses, Manual rebounds, pushes way up the court quickly, shoots and makes.  And on and on, and on.  At least Ezpeleta used all but one of his available timeouts. . . in the first half.

Anyway, San Pedro got hammered and by the fourth quarter it wasn't so much fun after all watching what was clearly a frustrating experience for the San Pedro guys.  This was a game which had more technicals and intentional fouls than any high school game we remember seeing in quite some time, maybe ever.  There were at least 3 technicals per team, and San Pedro was called for three intentional fouls in the second half, each time blatantly showing their frustration, trying to take out Manual players, or grabbing legs and pulling players down.  

Oh well. . . Maybe Manual will be the next D-I state championship team to come out of LA.  And maybe they won't.  But they can run, shoot and rebound, and that's just about all you need, together with a ton of luck and an injury free season.  They'll still need to get by Crenshaw, which had a small contingent out watching the Hollywood game earlier and they stuck around until about half-time of the Fremont v. LA game, which as things turned out later, was really when we too should have left.. . . But then we're getting ahead of the story. . .  E.J. Harris, Ryan Sims and David Merriweather came over with Merriweather's dad, and they were very impressed with the play of the Hollywood team.

The next game in reverse order was really nothing special to write home about either, as Fremont pretty much manhandled the LA Romans.  Ryan Fizenger (6'-1" Sr. SG/SF) and Jeffrey Roberson (5'-9" Sr. PG), two of the players from last year's team who were expected to lead the backcourt, were not there, and they are reportedly ineligible to play, but we didn't actually get the full story, just some rumors about their whereabouts. 

In any event, Fremont won't suffer their absence, because they've got Juwan Carter (6'-2" Sr. SG) originally from Indiana, who attended Dorsey, then West Covina last year:  He was the high scorer again for Fremont, and he finished with 32 points, with a ton of beautifully athletic shots, a couple of nice threes,  a ton of perimeter shots, slam dunks and very strong shooting, and he was probably the rebounding leader for Fremont, but we didn't keep track of that.  Fremont has an assistant coach or just a friend of the program, we're not sure which, who was there with his laptop running a program on which he was keeping stats,  one of those programs which has data on all of the players and a diagram of the court so you can keep track of where shots are made and by whom, where steals and turnovers take place on the floor, and so on, and we had planned to get our stats from him but he left shortly after the game and by then we were engrossed in wondering if San Pedro was ever going to score again after that first 3 pointer in the opening minutes of the first quarter.

For Fremont, Devin Houston (5'-9" Sr. SG/PF) didn't score a lot, but he must have had about 10 assists. Marcus Carnules (6'-0" Sr. SG) had 14 points on great shooting from the field, and Donte Limbrick (6'-1" Sr. PG/SG) had 8 points, playing strong with a good handle, but he has this really annoying tendency to get himself in the air and then look to pass; he got lucky a lot of the time against LA, but he's really going to get burned against teams that are more adept at defense. Chevyeon Williams (6'-3" Fr SG/SF) a new player who wasn't on the roster when we did our earlier preview played well,  scoring only 3 points, but getting about 3 steals and a bunch of rebounds, and he's very athletic if a bit thin.  Moreley Coven (6'-3" Sr. SF/PF) played tough defense and also rebounded well and he ended up with 8 points.   LaJay Godbolt (6'-5" Sr PF) did not score a lot, only 1 point, and he didn't play a lot either. Willie Dunn (6'-5" So. PG/SG/SF) adds some rebounding and defensive skills and he had 4 points for the night.  Finally, the Fremont Pathfinders had another new player, Ronnie Moore, and we didn't really find out who he was until after the game.  Maybe we'll have more observations on him from the final on Friday between Manual and Fremont.

LA played really badly, and it's pretty obvious that they are missing Kenny Johnson (5'-10" Jr. PG) who went down on Monday with an ankle sprain.   Scottie Stern (6'-5" Jr. SG/SF/PF) played the entire first half and most of the third quarter before being taken out, and he didn't return until the score and the game were completely out of reach.  His defensive effort seemed much improved from what we saw the night before, and his shots were dropping, but no one was really moving in any efficient or organized way on offense, and we remain convinced that Brian Segbefia (6'-1" Sr. SG) is not a point and shouldn't be the one bringing the ball up; sure he can shoot and penetrate, but in the open court against athletic, pressing teams like Fremont or Manual, he just does not display great court vision, which is to say he dribbles with his head down a lot.  Roger Flowers (6'-3" Sr. SG/SF) looked good, but obviously not good enough, and LA committed enough turnovers to last an entire season.   In the third quarter, the score was something like Fremont 60, LA 36, and while the Romans managed a little rally at the end, it wasn't enough, as Fremont won 74-46.

Oh, and about those references we made earlier in this article to what happened at the end of the evening, and why we should have left earlier than the end of the Manual Arts game:  All we've got to say is that Manual's security cops definitely should make at least a token appearance at the end of a late night game, and there should be better lighting in the parking area.   I guess we discovered first hand why the LA Unified School District doesn't schedule official regular season night games at Manual (or at many of the other inner city schools).   Call it our stupidity,  a lack of attention,  bad luck (as things turned out, actually we were very lucky),  or just being in  wrong place at the wrong time. Next time we'll definitely pick another parking space. 

There we were, walking out to the car, when two kids, either students at Manual or just kids from the neighborhood, but obviously two guys who had been in the gym, tried jack us.  One of them pulled a gun.   We didn't panic, didn't get aggressive, and just did the best thing we could think of.  First tried to reason with the kid.  Then when he started to get edgy, and we could clearly see he had a gun in his right hand, we reached into a pocket, threw some money on the ground, and the kid grabbed it and ran.

At least now we know how Mike Miller (the one at LACC not the one formerly at WCH) must have felt.  And it's not a good feeling either.   All we can say is too bad we didn't have $1,500 because in our case, it was hardly worth the kid's while.

And to our young assailant, all we've got to say is "Hey buddy, hope you enjoyed the $1 dollar bill you got.  Don't spend it all in one place."

It gave a whole new meaning to the phrase "Thanksgiving"   Tournament.

We don't want to over-exaggerate what happened (that's kind of hard to do) , but the seriousness of what happened to us  also doesn't deserve to be under-played either, especially for kids and parents who might think about attending games in different parts of town.   This kind of thing can happen anywhere, at any time.  On the street.  In a theatre. In your car.  Even  at a high school. 

We hesitated to write about this incident, because some people will take this as an invitation or warning to stay away from tournaments and games at schools in the inner city.  We certainly don't intend to convey that message, and there are desperate criminals everywhere, in the suburbs as well as in the inner city.    We don't intend to stay away from the games, and we'll be going back on Friday, and we'd encourage everyone else to go watch some great hoops too.  Just be careful.  And if you ever do get confronted, stay calm and under control, and most of all,  travel with a group, park in a well-lighted area, and plan where and how you'll get back to your car, and most of all stay aware of your surroundings at all times. 

Next time we're going leave with the entire Manual Arts team. . . or at least with coach Simpson.  Because he's right,  of course,  when he said to us (as we quoted him in our Manual Arts preview article)   "God has plans for all of us. Right now he wants me to be here." 

Guess he wants us to be here too.

Like we said before, have a Happy Thanksgiving.

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