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SoCalHoops Tournament News

Southern Pacific Shootout
Team Changes, Roster Changes--(Sept. 16, 1998)

Wow, things can change really fast sometimes, especially with TPI and Dart Stamps.

There are still 16 teams in this tourney, but some of the names and faces have changed. TPI will now only have one team, and it will feature Osa Esene (6'-6" Sr. F) from Inglewood, Armand Thomas (6'-8" Jr. PF) from Crenshaw, E.J. Harris (6'-2" Jr. PG) from Crenshaw, Ryan Sims (6'-8" Sr. F) from Crenshaw, Tommie Johnson (6'-4" Jr. G/F) from Crenshaw, James Wright (5'-11" Sr. PG) Manual Arts, Joe Shipp (6'-5" Sr. SG/F) from Fairfax, and Noel Felix (6'-7" Sr. PF) from Inglewood.

The same ARC team we spoke of will be there (minus Eric Rowher (6'-8" Sr. F/C) from Burbank, who reportedly will be attending his aunt's wedding in Northern California), and hopefully they'll replace him with another big guy for this tourney.

ABC Hoops will not be there. Instead a new team called "Hoopriddas" will be there coached by "Coach Money." They reportedly will have a bunch of the inner-city kids, and some of the Crossroads guys like Felipe Williams (6'-3" Jr. SG), Isaiah Fox (6'-8" So. F/C), and most likely Johnny Hardwick (6'-9" Sr. C) from Manual Arts will play for them too.

Belmont Shore will still have two teams.

Only one IEBP team will be playing (in Pool E), and we don't know which one this is--either Ballers & Players or the All-Stars, or maybe a combo team, which is what Dart thinks it will be. There will be three separate IEBP teams (Ballers & Players, All-Stars, and another) at the Pump Discovery Shootout.

The ICAN All-Stars are still coming, but the Shooting Stars aren't, at least we don't see them on the list, so you probably won't see some of the Orange County guys who were listed with them previously.

We also don't see the Inland team on the schedule, and they're either not playing this weekend, or maybe they're at the Pump thing.

Instead the Upland team will play at the Southern Pacific, so you can substitute Matt Santos (5'-10" Sr. PG) and Desmond Penigar (6'-6" Sr. SG/F) for Inland's Roderick Johnson (6'-7" Sr. F) and All-Tournament dada player Chaun Ballard (6'-4" Sr. SG), and maybe those guys will still play with someone else, or maybe they'll be at the Pump Shootout. Also on the Upland roster from last week are Sheldon Pace (5'-8" So. PG), Kirk Snyder (6'-4" So. G/F), Colin Strand (6'-0" Sr. G), Jesse Pruitt (6'-1" So. G), Kevin White (6'-0" So. G), Frank Musa (6'-4" Sr. F), Prentiss Harriss (6'-0" So. G), Dave Mellem (6'-4" Sr. F), Brad Busam (6'-3" Sr. G), Lionel Davis (6'-6" So. F), Jason Johnson (6'-8" So. F/C), and Demarcus Williams (6'-8" Jr. F/C). Steve Hamilton (6'-11" Sr. C) did not play last weekend at the LB Fall Hoops thingee, and instead he was the coach. He may yet play this weekend if he's feeling better. Oh, and if you get a chance to see them, watch for DeMarcus: He's vastly improved and his feet are better than they were this summer. He's getting some attention from Stanford and USC and we'll predict that he will be a top prospect next year as a senior.

Also missing from the lineup now is Slam-N-Jam (Craig Calloway, Sr.'s team).

It also looks like the Southern California All-Stars (Pat Barrett's squad) will not be playing, as most of their "older" young guys are now playing with the "And 1" team. So our guess is that you shouldn't look for any of the guys who played for Southern Cal at the 13-14 Nationals this year; instead this team will be the one from last week's Fall Hoops Classic, featuring DeAngelo Collins (6'-8" Fr. C), the two Jamals, and maybe even Mike Strawberry.

In addition to Team And 1, Team Reebok/Compton coached by Etop Udo Ema is still coming, which features the entire Compton High team, including Tito Maddox (6'-4" Sr. PG).

The Hood (Compton Dominguez) and Tyson Chandler (7'-0" So. C) is still coming too.

Westchester's entire team will now be coming, playing under the banner "WLA". So look for Jason McKinney (5'-10" Fr. PG), Eric Knight (6'-3" Sr. SG), Chad Bell (6'-10" So. C), Lou Wright (6'-6" Jr. SG/SF), and the rest of the team.

Another new team is "FBS" , which we are told stands for Future Basketball Stars, and it features a bunch of players from Compton and Long Beach Poly. We don't know for sure, but we suspect that this is the same team which played in the 4"D" Labor Day tournament which lost to the USA Blue team but then hammered the USA Red squad. We're told that one of the coaches is named Yvonne, and if that's right, then this would be that same team.

The schedule also shows a team called "Midway", and we are told that this is the same "Monsters of the Midway" team from last week at the Fall Hoops Classic, who were coached by Dave Bloomfield and had players like Omar Said (6'-1" Sr. G) from LA Baptist, Jordan Ideda (5'-8" Jr. PG) from LA Baptist, Andrew Bloomfield (6'-2" Jr. G) from LA Baptist, Clint Hamblin (6'-2" Jr. G) from Village Christian, Richard Harrison (6'-6" Sr. F) from Chatsworth, Robert Warren (5'-10" Sr. PG) from LA El Camino Real, Miguel Lopez (6'-3" Sr. F) from LA Baptist, Aaron Maxwell (6'-5" Sr. F) from Village Christian, and Marshall Houser (6'-6" Jr. F) from Laguna Hills HS. The Midway roster last week had Adam Drell (6'-6" Jr. PF) from Chatsworth, but look for him at the Pump Discovery Shootout on Saturday and Sunday with the Valley Slam team instead, particularly since the Valley Slam and Midway games on Saturday are at the same time.

Those are the roster and team changes. We'll post the schedules and pools up separately.