san diego nike prep classic announcement

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SoCalHoops Tournament News

San Diego Nike Prep Classic
Set For Dec. 27-30 This Year--(Dec. 3, 1999)

The San Diego Union Tribune today carried a story on this year's San Diego Nike Prep Classic, the winter counterpart to the summer Nike National Championships, and there have been some changes from what had previously been some of the announced teams and locations for games. It seems that St. Anthony's is out. Mater Dei is in. And Cox Arena, where the finals have traditionally been played for the last two years, is also out.

The Nike Prep Classic is a showcase event, and it will be running concurrently with the Artesia-hosted Best in the West Tournament which will be held at Long Beach State. We can't physically be in two places at once, but we're getting some good assistance from our friends in San Diego, and we suspect that we'll have some pretty good coverage of both events this year.

The Nike Prep Classic is scheduled to take place December 27-30, 1999, and will be played at Torrey Pines, San Dieguito Academy and Rancho Bernardo highs schools.

Mater Dei, ranked No. 2 in the state (by CalHi Sports) behind Compton Dominguez, will be playing, but Dominguez, which will be at the Best in the West, obviously won't be there. The event will also feature LA Crenshaw which is ranked No. 4 by Cal-Hi Sports, Concord DeLaSalle (No. 6), Simi Valley (No. 11), Oakland Fremont (No. 12), Fairfax (No. 13 )and USDHS (No. 20).

Other top teams from outside the State will include Alta of Sandy, Utah; New York Oyster Bay St. Dominic's; and Tucson's Salpointe Catholic.

San Diego teams willl include the USDHS Dons playing in the Classic Division, along with Horizon Christian (ranked locally at No. 2), St. Augustine (No. 3 locally), Torrey Pines (No. 4 locally) and Mira Mesa (No. 6 locally). El Camino (No. 5 locally), Bishop's (No. 8 locally) and Rancho Bernardo (No. 10 locally) are in two other divisions, giving the tournament eight of the top 10 local teams.

The "Classic Division" will be played at Torrey Pines and the Championship in that Division is scheduled for Dec. 30 at 7:35 p.m.

The "Governor's Trophy" Division, with teams such as J.W. North of Riverside, Rialto Eisenhower, Mountain View of Bend, Ore., and Bishop's will be played at Rancho Bernardo High School.

The "Mayor's Cup" Division, featuring El Camino, Capistrano Valley and Foothill of Henderson, Nev., will be held at San Dieguito High School .

The first round matchups include a 9 a.m. game on Dec. 27 at Torrey Pines with Crenshaw (EJ Harris, Tommy Johnson, Chris Davis) against Mira Mesa (Teyo Johnson and Ammon Gordon).

We'll be getting the schedules and posting the brackets up shortly. And if we're all lucky, hopefully the organizers will again activate their website, so we can all get the results directly from the tournament folks.

Stay tuned for more.