tons o' fun

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SoCalHoops Tournament News

A Ton O' Basketball Fun,
And We Were There--(Nov. 28, 1999)

We saw so much basketball yesterday that we're a little bit on overload right now. . . and to think the high school season is just starting in SoCal tomorrow, November 29, so things are really going to start rolling. . . We were at the Wooden Classic yesterday from about 11:00 a.m. until about 6:00 p.m. and then after watching Mike Dunleavy, Jr., pound the Trojans we went over to Staples to see if his dad could coach (just kidding). . . he can and Portland walloped the Clippers. . . . didn't get home until after midnight, so that's why we didn't post anything yesterday on the John R. Wooden games. We've got a ton of pictures from the games which we'll be posting up shortly along with some articles. But yesterday was just a ton of fun: We saw and hooked up with more people at the Pond than we had really anticipated seeing, including some we hadn't run into in quite a while. . . guys like Herb Livesay, who is now a scout for the Trailblazers and one of the directors of Snow Valley, sitting in the back of the press row with about 25 other pro scouts who were all out drooling over the Collins twins, Shane Battier, Mamadou N'Diaye, Chris Porter, Chris Carrawell, Jeff Trapagnier, and some very special freshmen who will definitely wind up in the pro ranks someday (we're not counting Jason Collins in this because even though he's a freshman and might be make the pros too, we still think of him as more than a freshman). . . . freshmen like Mike Dunleavy, Jr., who was spectacular, Carlos Boozer, and Casey Jacobsen.

Not that we want to drop names, but there were so many basketball types running all over the place that is was overwhelming. . . our buddy Dana Pump was there with Tom Dooley, one of the New Mexico Assistant coaches (what was he doing in town? We'll leave that to your imagination, but don't think too hard about who New Mexico might be recruiting from SoCal. . . ); there was Dave Nahabedian from Networkxx Scouting, one of the top JUCO scouting services, who was there with the Toronto Raptors' GM Glenn Grunwald who was sitting next to us during the games. . . he was also scouting some of those same guys that Herb was after. . . Wayne Carlson, a local OC high school coach who is also a director of Snow Valley Camp just out watching; Dinos Trigonis and Etop Udo-Ema of Rim Rattler were there, as was Darren "Mats" Matsubara with his whole family down from Fresno to watch former EBO player Carlos Boozer rip the boards for Duke with his former Pump teammate Mike Dunleavy; Chris Jeffries, one of Carlos' former teammates from EBO was also there in the house, and he came down from Fresno with a bunch of other guys; there was Tracy Pierson from PacWestHoops (at least we thought we saw Tracy there), Frank Burlison of the OC Register, Vincent Bonsignore of the Daily News, and a ton of other baskeball reporters. . . and the list goes on and on. We also got a chance to talk before and after the games with some of the coaches: Henry Bibby, Silvey Dominguez, Paul Mokeski of USC; Mike Montgomery, Blaine Taylor and Tony Fuller of Stanford; Coach K and Wojo from Duke; and Cliff Ellis of Auburn. And don't forget Coach Wooden, the single reason why the whole thing was happening in the first place. He looked to be in great health.

And as if that wasn't enough for one day, we then hooked up with Howard Avery, one of the best trainers and coaches in the business, who came in from Portland (and New York, Vegas and other spots where he's been travelling the past month) just to watch his protoge' Mike Dunleavy, Jr. rip it up and impress everyone. Mike Sr. was in town for Portland's game against the Clippers later in the evening, and he thoughtfully had some extra tickets set aside, so off we went to the Clipper's game where we then got to spend the rest of the evening watching Damon Stoudamire (another Avery protoge') shredding the hapless Clippers (yeah, even though they have some great young players like Lamar Odum, they're still "hapless" and they looked it last night). Following the game, we got to hang for a while with Damon, Rasheed Wallace, Avery, Tim Grgurich, Keith Closs and his little brother Greg Jones (who is now at Sierra HS, having transferred out of Venice), and a few other before we had to get Avery out of there so he wouldn't miss his flight back to Vegas. . .

But enough of this stuff. . . . we've got some pictures and some other interesting stuff on the way, including some game stories, so stay turned. . .