ccse roster

SoCalHoops High School & Prep News

adidas Big Time Vegas Tournament
CCSE Team Roster--(July 15, 1998)

The Central Cal Sports Express is led by head coach George Albanez, and assistant coach Shakir Ahmad, both of whom reside in Santa Barbara. While there have been varying degrees of praise and criticism for Albanez over the last several years, mostly involving the transfer situation of Tony Freeman (6'-4" Sr. SG/SF), who originally played at Santa Barbara, then moved away from the area with his family and then came back to Santa Barbara, Albanez is a dedicated and hardworking coach. He says of the Freeman situation: "Tony is like a son to me. He was in a bad situation in his family life, and I did whatever I could to see to it that he had a supportive environment where he could attend school without any distractions."

CCSE is undoubtedly a very talented team. In the Spring EBO Tournament held in Fresno annually, CCSE finished second. They've got a pretty good pool in the adidas Big Time (they are in Pool %, which is actually 4 pools after "Pool ZZ", which we guess would make it Pool DDD"-- they'll face the Michigan Mustangs, Wrecking Crew, and Franklin Covey Express in pool play on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday). They are, admittedly, one of the "powerhouse" teams in the tournament, like QBL or P & R 1, or EBO, but they can be very competitive and surprised a lot of people at the EBO Tourney this year.

Here's the roster for Vegas, which we got from Coach Albanez yesterday at the conclusion of the Pump West Coast All-Star camp as he was leaving for Vegas:

BJ Ward (6'-1" Sr. PG) from Oxnard Santa Clara High
Nick Jones (6'-4" Sr. SG) from Oxnard Santa Clara High
Tony Freeman (6'-4" Sr. SG/SF) from Santa Barbara High
Alfred Williams (6'-3" Jr. G) from Bakersfield High
Terrance Dunn (6'-3" Sr. G) from Bakersfield High
Patrick McCoy (6'-6" Sr. F) from DeAnza High
Joey Wallace (6'-6" Jr. F) from Salisbury, Connecticut
Phillip Johnson (6'-11" So. C) from Arroyo Grande
Dan D'Entremont (6'-3" Sr. G) from San Luis Obispo
Benny Garcia (6'-0" Sr. G) from Paso Robles
John Hoffert (6'-10" Sr. F) from Davis, California
Torey Harper (6'-6" Sr. F) from Ridgeview

This squad has 8 or 9 definite D-1 prospects, including Ward, Jones, Freeman, Williams and McCoy, a couple of solid D-II players and certainly no one below D-III. The team will evidently not be playing with 6'-8" senior J.R. Allen who did not graduate from high school but instead opted to finish out his senior year at Phillips Academy Andover next year. At least J.R. wasn't on the roster we got yesterday from George. Maybe he will travel with the team, but if so, George wasn't talking about it.

Look for this team to go deep in the tournament, and possibly be a darkhorse contender to knock off a couple of the favorites.