nike summer

As the summer open evaluation period limps into it's final days, and as the injuries mount and players drop out from exhaustion, a few teams will still be going at it until the very end, when the clock strikes midnight on Friday, July 31 (actually it's 12:00 a.m. Saturday morning)--that marks the time that the college coaches have to vacate the premises. But the tourney will still be going strong all the way through to Sunday, when the Championship game of the Nike National Summer Championship will be played.

The tournament is put on by the High Five America folks and will be held at USIU in San Diego. The first games get underway on Thursday afternoon, July 30, at 10:00 a.m. and go all the way through to Sunday at 3:00 p.m. The tournament consists of two days of pool play and then two days of single elimination play. Someone will have to get a bye, because there are apparently 15 teams, divided into three pools (and everyone knows that you need a number divisible by 4 to run it without a bye for at least one team). Here are the pools

Pool A

Arizona Stars
Belmont Shore
New York Riverside Church
Sports Express

Pool B

Bray Center
Portland Legends
Seattle Rotary Boys Club
Southern California All-Stars

Pool C

Bloomington Red AAU
High Five America
Illinois Warriors
New Mexico Lobos

Pool C:

Alabama Lasers
Houston Jaguars
QBL Lakewood

Some of these teams we know and we'll be posting up rosters and schedules as soon as we can. The Southern California All-Stars will field the usual suspects, consisting of virtually the entire Dominguez High team:

Keith Kincaide (6'-4" Sr. G)
Tyson Chandler (7'-0" So. C)
Keith Brooks (6'-5" Jr. F)
Keylon Fortune (5'-8" So. PG)
Jason Haley (6'-0" Sr. G)
Cedric Thompson (6'-5" Jr. F)
Mika McKinney (6'-2" Jr. G)
Steve Moore (6'-3" Jr. G)
James Jackson (5'-9" Sr. G)
Donald James (5'-8" Sr. G)

We also heard that Belmont Shore will be taking a pretty impressive group, consisting of

Travon Bryant (6'-8" Jr F) from Long Beach Jordan
Skip Esene (6'-6" Sr F) from Inglewoood High
Noel Felix (6'-7" Sr F) from Inglewood High
Terry Hosnedove (6'-5" Sr F) from Compton High
Tito Maddux (6'-4" Sr PG) from Compton High
Mike Malloy (6'-3" Sr G) from USDHS
Jack May (6'-7" Sr F) from Ayala
Albert Miller (6'-3" Sr Prep G)
Ellis Myles (6'-7" Jr F) from Compton High
Kam Walton (6'-8" Jr F) from USDHS

We spoke with Dinos and he says that Casey Jacobsen (6'-5" Sr. SG/SF) from Glendora will not be playing for Belmont Shore in the foreseeable future. Frank Burlison of the Orange County Register has Jacobsen playing for the Southern California All-Stars, which he did before he left to lead the U.S. Under 17 team to a championship in Moscow, which caused him to miss the Nike All-American Camp. Actually, Jacobsen playing with SoCal is the culmination of the "merger" efforts of ARC's Rich Goldberg and Southern California All-Star's Pat Barrett to creat a "super team." We'll see how it works out.