SoCal High School & Prep Report

21st Annual Reebok Las Vegas
Prep Classic: Mt. Zion First Day--(December 19, 1997)

All right! We're here. Got to Vegas after waiting one hour on the Los Angeles International runway, and then a bumpy hour and 10 minute flight. Got the rental car and drove over to Durango High, just in time to see Mt. Zion demolish the Baldwin Fighting Highlanders from Pittsbugh, Pennsylvania.

For those not familiar, Mt. Zion is the defending champion of this tournament. Last year they beat Harvard Westlake by three points in the final. They had Tracy McGrady who is now in the NBA playing for the Toronto Raptors, and H-W had the Collins twins, who are now sometimes playing (Jarron is injured, and Jason is coming in off the bench) for Stanford.

Mt. Zion is really a different team this year, but they have completely reloaded. Their roster is incredibly deep, and during the game with Baldwin, they went 12 deep off the bench. . . in other words they played everyone in this game.

Mt. Zion started:

Travis Robinson (6'-7" Sr. F)
Gerald Raymond (6'-2" Sr. G)
Corey Hightower (6'-6" Sr. G)
Eric Short (6'-10" Sr. C)
Marcus Williams (6'-7" Jr. F)

Baldwin started:

Brandon Maravich (5'-9" Jr. G)
Keith Schoon (6'-3" Sr. F)
Brian Kresak (5'-11" Sr. G)
Corey Barnes (6'-5" Sr. C)
Ryan Dedes (6'-0" Jr. G)

One look at these starting lineups should tell you just how much Mt. Zion dominated this game. From the very first basket by Hightower, a slam dunk, Zion just controlled the game. We'll get right to the final score, which was pretty much irrelevant: It was 85-30, Mt. Zion, and it wasn't really even that close.

At the end of the first half (these games were two 16 minute halve, stop-clock, with no shot clock, and that stupid new rule where no one can enter the lane until the ball hits either the backboard or the rim on a free throw), the score was 44-15. In the second half, Mt Zion scored only 4 points less, and Baldwin got a carbon copy performance of 15 points, but from a completely different group of bench players.

Hightower pretty much did whatever he wanted. We counted at least six slam dunks, and Hightower finished with 18 points, 4 assists, and 6 rebounds in 19 minutes of play. He's one of the most exciting players we've seen this year, and if you get the chance to see this team play, don't miss it. It was bit like watching an NBA team, or at least a very good Division 1 team against a practice team. Hightower slammed, slashed, drove to the hole, and was named the game's MVP.

Another huge player who had just a great game was Kenneth Booker (6'-8 Jr. F) who didn't start but played 23 minutes, the most of any Mt. Zion player. He had 15 points, 4 rebounds and 3 assists. He's this very thin, tall and intense player, with nice spin moves, and like Hightower, he had about 2 or three huge slam dunks.

Actually, speaking of slams, it started to get a bit out of hand in the second half, but at least it kept the crowd into the game, which was about as big a blowout as occurred in these games today. Each possession down the floor for Mt. Zion, it seemed that each player tried to outdo the other for the most outrageous and backboard thundering slam, and although there were a few spins, layups and easy J's, there were an enourmous amount of slams from Mt.Zion tonight.

My personal favorite player though was #4 Travis Robinson who got into it with Baldwin's Brandon Maravich, who is about a foot shorter (or more) on one particularly tremendous slam and an ensuing block which Travis had of Maravich's shot. Apparently, Maravich said something to Travis, and for about the next 5 minutes, Travis literally shadowed Brandon, staring straight down in his face, glowering and glaring at him, and literally standing right in his face, even during the times when play was stopped. Finally one of the refs came over and told Robinson to knock it off, but Travis had made his point, and even Maravich, who really was pretty intimidated at first, just couldn't help laughing. We couldn't figure out if Brandon was laughing at or with Travis, or maybe he was laughing at the score, but it was a whole lot better than crying.

Rodney White ((6'-8" Jr. C) also played very well, and he's got a very well developed game for a junior, but then there really isn't anyone on this team who doesn't have a well-developed game. Any of the twelve on the bench could start.

Just for the sake of providing the info, we talked with several ofthe Mt.Zion players after the game, and here's what's up: Raymond, who finished with 14 points in 21 minutes is considering Oklahoma and Michigan, while Corey Hightower says that he's still looking at Michigan, Michigan State, LSU, Fresno and probably Missouri, as is Travis Robinson (Missouri, that is). Rodney White says he's getting a ton of letters and will definitely have some visits this season and is presently leaning toward Colorado and UMass; he likes to ski (look out, a 6'-8" skier) so Colorado is No.1 on his list.

We also spoke with Travis Robinson about what happened in their game against Oak Hill, and said that they simply lost it. But the most frustrating thing, said Robinson, is what he viewed as the arrogance (or ignorance) of the supposed "pollsters" concerning who is and who is not "ranked" in the mythical "top (fill in the number)" of high school teams. "When I saw in the papers that last year we were ranked, and this year some of the polls didn't even rank us, I wanted to just cry," said Robinson. "Even though we lost four guys, including McGrady, we're every bit as good as we were last year. If these guys only knew how hard we work and how much we focus, they'd never say some of the things they say about high school players. It really hurt that they would exclude us, not even rank us this year," said Robinson.

"We came to Vegas because it is the place to be seen by everyone. We just played in Atlanta, but it really is not nearly as important. We're here to win, not to play around on the strip, and we've got curfew and we're gonna do it if we can," said Robinson. "We want to prove all those poll guys wrong. We deserve to be ranked."

And from what we've seen, he's right. This is not just a good team, it's a great team, and it might only be challenged, truly challenged, in this tourney by Rice (which won by more than 60 tonight ... later for that).

Just to wrap this up, we'll put up full stats and scores for all the games later. Because this wasn't over until about 11 pm tonight, due to several delays in the Harvard Westlake game (about which we'll have a full story later), the games didn't end until Westchester had finished hammering South at abut 11 pm. Then we had to finally make it over to our hotel and then we also had to eat, so since it's about 3 in the morning now, we'll finish off for the night with a few more stats.

Mt. Zion scorers, in addition to those above were: Harrell 2 points, Robinson 16 points, and 3 rebounds, Raymond 14 points in 21 minutes, White 7 points, Meyers 4 points, Williams 4 points, and Taylor 2 points.

Scoring for Baldwin, which was pretty limited, was as follows: Kresak 12, Simmons 0, Schoon 2, Maravich 3, Dedes 2, Douglass 2, Barnes 2, Barker 0, Sitnica 0, Busselli 2, Defbo 4, Winans 0, Atavilla 1, Scheibel DNP.

Baldwins scoring was actually (except for Kresak, who really was a very nice PG/SG and who is looking at Carnegi-Mellon and Allegheny State and some other schools in Ohio) pretty dismal and this team was just plain overmatched.

We'll have more on Mt.Zion as the week continues, chiefly from our correspondent Jason Day.

In the meantime, we're going to get some sleep. Later.

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