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SoCalHoops High School & Prep News

Hoops & Heat: Palm Springs &
Desert City Classics--(June 22, 1998)

It was hot in the desert this past weekend. In fact, it was well over 100 degrees Friday, Saturday and Sunday. But that didn't bother us, because we spent it inside air-conditioned gyms and driving from court to court to court. We saw some very impressive basketball this weekend at the Palm Springs Summer Classic and the Desert City Summer Basketball Classic. The Imperial and Coachella Valleys were rocking this weekend with more action than we could have imagined or hoped for, and for at least a few hours, we thought we'd died and gone to hoop heaven. Well at least for the games we saw at the Cathedral City Desert Classic hosted by Cathedral City High.

For those who don't know, the Palm Springs Tournament used to be the big deal in town, but then Cathedral City built this great new facility, got themselves a new coach in Rob Hamner, and started to draw the attention of more and more players in the area, and thus they started to draw the attention of more teams from outside the area, 48 in all, including teams like Ayala, Poway, Servite, Canyon, Artesia, Los Amigos, El Segundo, Banning, Pacifica, Bishop Diego and more. By comparison, the Palm Springs tourney is really a pretty small affair compared to the larger Cathedral City-hosted Desert City Classic, and featured 12 teams while the Desert City event featured two separate brackets, a 16 team bracket and a 32 team bracket. The PS Classic was played at Palm Springs High School; the Desert City was played at Cathedral City High, which is only about three miles from P.S. High, College of the Desert, Palm Desert High, Desert Christian High, and La Quinta High. Literally everywhere you went on Friday and Saturday there was a game being played.Hot stuff.

Of course we couldn't catch it all, but between Mike Miller of West Coast Hoops and me, we saw some pretty impressive ball. We also saw a St. Paul team at the Palm Springs Classic, a promising but as yet inconsistent Buckley team, Artesia, Cathedral City, Servite, Newbury Park, San Dimas,Canyon Country Canyon, Poway, and Ayala. More about these teams in a little bit, because first we want to talk about a few of the individual players. And for those who want to know, Mike looks fine. But now back to the players.

We have one thing to say about Cathedral City:

Gerald DeVance.

Remember the name.

You'll be hearing from and about this guy in the future. DeVance, the starting point guard for Coach Rob Hamner's Cathedral City team is only now a Freshman, (he'll be a sophomore in the fall), and he only stands 5'-7", but he's one of the best and quickest point guards we've seen this year, or maybe in any year, on the west coast. He's also a pretty nice kid, polite, intelligent, and he wants to progress, and is working hard on getting his academics in order. But he's really a great player. In fact, as we were watching his game against Newbury Park at Cathedral City High on Saturday, Mike Miller of West Coast Hoops came into the gym with Jason Kapono and the rest of the Artesia guys who were waiting to play the next game, and Mike and I sat there for the remainder of the game watching him run, drive, shoot from among the tall trees, and in general control the tempo and flow of the game in a way that neither of us had seen such a young player do in quite a while. Mike was equally impressed, and he commented that De Vance looked better to him than many others had at that age, better than some of the top senior point guards did when they were the same age (no names, please).

Really, we kid you not, DeVance is the real deal. Of course he made a few silly little mistakes that only a freshman/sophomore would make, and occasionally he just gets going a bit too fast and needs to work on taking better care of the ball, but he's got tremendous lateral quickness, a very good handle, and generally knows when to push and when to back off, and he doesn't hesitate to distribute the ball to his teammates, very much a true point. And, to top it off, he can play defense. He got a bunch of steals, and even one block.

The first game we saw was Cathedral beating up on the Dan Bobik-less Newbury Park team. In addition to De Vance, Cathedral has LaVouse Long (5'-11" Sr. SG) a very good j shooter and ball-handler, Thomas Shoemake (6'-7" Fr. F) a big freshman who can play the post and applies tremendous defensive pressure for a kid just out of junior high, Paul Heredia (6'5" So. F) who transferred from Palm Desert High and who will be a definite starter for the next three years, Clifton Cooper (6'-4" Sr. G/F) and Max Patrick (6'-2" Sr. G) who provide the senior leadership. They beat Newbury Park pretty convincingly, but the Panthers managed to hang on for most of the game behind the strong play of a bunch of newcomers, and two other Bobik brothers along with fine leadership from Brian Polen (6'-4" Sr. F) who played very well but got into foul trouble early in the game.

We came back later that night to watch Cathedral City bang it up with coach Tom Gregory's Ayala squad including Jock May (6'-7" Jr. F), Chasen Jones (5'-11" Soph PG), Ekene Agwuene (6'-3" Soph F), and Daniel Sherman (6'-6" Jr. F). Ayala won the game by three. Ayala had led by as many as twelve after the half, but behind the great play of DeVance and LaVouse (actually pronounced "Luh Voss"), Cathedral came charging back. De Vance was not intimidated at all by the tall trees, driving, shooting over much bigger guys and between he and LaVouse they pretty much kept Cathedral in it at the end. But Cathedral lost and Ayala moved into the championship game against the winner of the Servite-Artesia contest later that evening.

Also on Saturday afternoon, we saw one of the ugliest games we can recall between Anaheim Servite and the Poway Titans, and frankly it didn't look like either team wanted to or deserved to win. But Servite did, and got the honor of being served up as the appetizer at 9:00 p.m. for Artesia's late game meal. We had seen Artesia in the afternoon only briefly, and chatted for a few minutes with Coach Merino, but we didn't notice the addition of a new Artesia player until the evening game. Really, where does Artesia keep getting these guys? There was 6'-8" Jason Kapono, probably the most highly publicized freshman two years ago, who is now getting lots of attention but who should be getting as much as anyone on the West Coast this year, because he's just about the best 6'-8" guy in SoCal if not the entire west coast. There was Jack Martinez (6'-8" So. F), Apolinar Fernandez (6'-9:" So. F), Andre Hazel (5'-11" Jr. PG) and some new guy Josh Kroenke (6'-6" Sr. G/F), who apparently has already graduated from a high school somewhere in the Midwest, but who will attend prep school next year. . . as if Artesia wasn't already good enough or tall enough. They also brought along some other young players including Marcus Crain (6'-1" So. G), Malcom Herring (6'-4" So. F) and Jon Eggerson (6'-3" Fr. G). Artesia didn't have the services of Aaron Hamilton (6'-5" Sr. F) who, at least according to those who know (i.e., Jason Kapono) was attending Ed O'Bannon's wedding and couldn't make it to the tournament.

So there was Artesia with Kapono at times playing point, among a lineup the size of the many pro teams against Servite, which is a good high school team, but no match for the trees from Lakewood Artesia. Saturday night's game against Servite was not really even close, and many folks didn't stick around to see it end. Kapono was actually running point for most of the first half, and we have to say that no matter how good his ball handling skills are, he really is not a point guard. Maybe a Magic Johnson type of forward, but definitely not point guard type material...But then he's getting to be damn good. Fernandez would post up high, they would slide the ball over to the corner, then hit Martinez in the middle of the key, with his back to the basket, he'd turn, and then, wham. . . he must have hit three in a row off the same play, and Martinez is getting better and better. Not surprisingly, Artesia won.

The games at Cathedral were extremely well run, the gym is a palace, with two courts, well lit, air-conditioned, and every game played at Cathedral had three refs, mostly college or WNBA refs, a very well-run crew, but Servite coach Scott Hamilton was not very happy with the officiating. His line of the night to one of the refs: "C'mon, ref, that's the future State Champion team out there; call some fouls." Big yuks from the crowd.

The games at Palm Springs High were also well run by Palm Springs coach Paul Barton, and the teams at this much smaller tournament (at least this weekend--we're told that next weekend is a much larger tournament, and then a girls' tourney the week after) were split about 50-50 between smaller school's varsity teams, and some of the larger school jv teams. Ayala sent a jv squad made up of what clearly looked like jv players, no one over 6'-1". Palm Springs had a couple of pretty good players and they managed to go undefeated in pool play and advanced to the single elimination bracket on Sunday, eventually facing St. Paul.

We did get a look at Buckley, a small Division V school from Los Angeles (Sherman Oaks), coached by Dan Haasch, in his third year as Buckley's varsity coach and a former assistant at Glendora where he coached Casey Jacobsen's two older brothers and Tracey Murray. Buckley brought a very young squad with only one senior, Jeremy Howard (6'-3" Sr. SG/F), a few juniors including Adam Pastor (6'-0" Jr. PG/SG), and Simon Leonov (6'-2" Jr. F) , Mike Pakravan (5'-11" Jr. G/F), Mike Lalezarian (5'-10" Jr. G), a few sophs such as Jake Scannel (6'-3" So. F), Colin Ward-Henninger (6'-3" Jr. F/C)and Alex Clancy (5'-10" So. G), and only one freshman, David Gale (5'-10 Fr. PG/SG). They showed just how young they were though, as the team went 2-3, losing first to Buena Park, then to Palm Springs, but bouncing back to defeat South Torrance easily in the third game Saturday afternoon. On Sunday morning in the single elimination bracket, they crushed a very inexperienced team from Coachella, but then lost in a very tight semi-final game to Costa Mesa Calvary, a game which Buckley should have won. Buckley jumped out to a 9 point lead, holding Calvary to only 4 points in the first quarter, and then only another 5 in the second quarter, and Buckley led 24-9 at the half. In fact, Buckley played its best defense on Sunday morning during the first half and the beginning of the second half as Colin-Ward Henninger and David Gale combined for 8 steals in a 6 minute run in the second and third periods. But then midway through the third, Calvary came charging back, and when they took the lead by one with only 2 minutes remaining in the period, Buckley never led again as its defense all but disappeared. Buckley lost by 4, but Calvary ultimately lost to St. Paul.

Among individual Buckley players Adam Pastor started at point and continued to show signs of improvement. He has a nice handle and can shoot from just about anywhere, has reasonably good passing ability, with a nice j from about 15' on the perimeter at the baseline being his favorite. However he has a tendency to want to drive too much for a point, usually getting caught deep under the hoop, and with not much size on the team, this doesn't leave him with too many options down low. But he's come a long way since last year. Also at the guard spot sharing duties at the point and two spot, Alex Clancy, up from the JV's, who seems to be a better two than a one with a nice three-point set shot and a good perimeter game with a high, quick release. Mike Lalazerian, the starting 2 guard played somewhat erratically, and definitely needs to improve his defense; on offense he tends not to penetrate, but makes up for it with decent precision from the perimeter, and he's a bit more athletic than Pastor or Clancy.

Gale and Clancy came in as the back-up guards off the bench, and between them , Gale had more offense in the early games, while Clancy had the better game against Calvary, hitting for a big three and one drive in the lane which kept Buckley in it at the end. Gale collected 8 points, four assists and three steals in the game against Buena Park on Friday, another 8 points, four assists, and two steals in the game against South Torrance, and generally showed that he can run the break and shoot from the perimeter, hitting some 3s and making some really terrific passes. He has a high degree of ball knowledge and could be one of the better young points in D-5 this year.

Up front, Buckley had Simon Leonov, Jeremy Howard, Pakravan, Colin Ward-Henninger and Jake Scannel. Scannel is a big player who can guard the low post effectively, but he seems to have difficulty when he is passed the ball on the break, not quite seeming comfortable with the rock in his hands, but we attributed this to just a case of nerves and inexperience at the post position against varsity competition; when he is not being pressured he's a good shooter, and needs to learn to take his time to turn, look, drop-step to the hole and set up before releasing the shot. While Jeremy Howard's play was inconsistent, and he needs to learn how to play defense, he's an effective rebounder, and he does at least keep the ball in play when swatting away shots. He also has a nice 15' j from the perimeter and he's not afraid to take the shot, but his lack of defensive play had him not seeing much action this last weekend. At the other forward spot off the bench was Pakravan, who is a bulky, almost "football-type" player, who should work on developing improved court vision; he is not blessed with great speed or a particularly deft handle, and tends to pick up his dribble whenever pressure is applied; he does, however, have a good three-point shot and can pound them in all day from the perimeter. But he's somewhat of an enigma-- as an offensive player, he really belongs out on the perimeter at the wing and as a defensive player he is really more effective down low, but needs to work on his footwork in the post. Colin Ward-Henninger was named Buckley's MVP of the tournament and nominated to the All-Tournament team, and after getting off to a rocky start in the Buena Park game on Friday, he came roaring back on Saturday and scored 16 points in the Palm Springs game, and another 18 in the South Torrance game. In the Calvary game, Simon Leonov was the biggest and most pleasant surprise of the game, as he and Scannel virtually shut down Calvary's much bigger front-line, and we think that he's just a great kid with a fine work ethic in the low post.

All in all, it was a hot weekend (literally and figuratively) in the Desert. Big fun and tons of basketball.