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SoCalHoops Tournament News

1998 dada Fall Hoops Classic:
Some Brief, Very Brief Notes--(Sept. 13, 1998)

It's now well after midnight on Sunday morning, and we're literally a bit bleary-eyed, so we're going to keep this brief. Here's some stuff we know:

In the TPI v. Inland game played today (Saturday), which was won by TPI pretty convincingly, Joe Ship had an amazing 19 points at the half. But even more amazing was Chaun "I never met a shot I didn't like" Ballard of Inland, who had an even more amazing 29 points at the half, including 14 points on two point field goals and an even more incredible five (count 'em) five three pointers, at the half!. Of course, Chaun's amazing shooting streak didn't extend to any other game, and his Inland team finished 4th, or dead last in it's pool, winless in the tournament.

Ship looked great, as did Jason Morrissette. And Joe Ship will be hosted by Vanderbilt, home of DeAndre Moore, late of Compton last year, and we think the two of them would make a great couple next season after DeAndre gets a year of D-I under his belt.

For Inland, Justin Pinnex (6'-0" Sr. G) from Val Verde looked good, and Roderick Johnson (6'-7" Sr. F) rebounded, jumped out of the gym a couple of times, and scored regularly, but just not enough against Johnny Hardwick (6'-10" Sr. C) from Manual Arts and Chris Osborne (6'-9" Sr. C) from Westchester, both of whom did their best to make Roderick look ineffectual.

Our favorite player for TPI, and actually for the whole tournament so far is young Jason McKinney (5'-10" Fr. PG) from Westchester. That kid can jump, and has more energy than we've seen from almost any point guard. He's got the best cross-over of any point guard in SoCal, and he literally broke Pinnex's ankles several times. Armand Thomas only played a couple of minutes before suffering a gash over his left eye which required him to sit the rest of the game. And Casey Jacobsen (6'-6" Sr. SG) from Glendora didn't show. He was probably hung over from drinking all that Stanford Farm Champagne.

Tony Booker (6'-5" Sr. SG) gets the nod as the busiest player in the tournament, as we saw him playing for three different teams during the day. He did look pretty good with East-West, but he looked even better with the San Diego Future Stars coached by Fentriss Wynn.

And while we didn't see it, QBL finally lost a game, to none other than the San Diego Future Stars. Wow.